Pakistan’s value-added segment rose 12 percent to clock in at $840m, wherein textile exports in the month of December 2017 have risen 10 percent to $1.13 billion from $1.03 billion in same period of last year, while basic textile segment followed with a more modest 4 percent increment to reach $292m, according to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).

Knitwear recorded highest export growth (20 percent YoY) amongst all product categories, followed by readymade garments (9 percent YoY), cotton cloth (6 percent YoY) and bed wear (4 percent YoY). On the other hand, cotton yarn exports remained stagnant in value.

Encouragingly, growth in exports trend was led by a broad based increase in volumetric exports .

Cotton cloth and readymade garments registered the highest volumetric export growth of 13 percent YoY and 11 percent YoY, respectively. Cotton yarn, bed wear and knitwear recorded volumetric export growth of 8 percent YoY, 7 percent YoY and 5 percent YoY, respectively.

Conversely, realized prices for all product categories except for kntiwear witnessed a drop of 2 percent-7 percent. Comparison of realized prices and volumetric sales of Dec’17 revealed that margins for spinners and weavers are likely to witness a slight improvement on a YoY basis in Dec’17.

As far as the value added segment is concerned, margins of knitwear segment would experience the greatest improvement followed by bedwear and readymade garments.

On a cumulative basis, total textile exports rose 8 percent YoY in 1HFY18 mainly driven by growth in value-added segment which expanded by 11 percent YoY. On the other hand, basic textile segment recorded a sluggish growth of mere 1 percent YoY.