- Vegetables and fruit Each of these categories has several sub-categories and more than 20 disaggregated products were considered for this study. On the other hand, in this preliminary investigation also some other agricultural products were excluded. Among these are cotton (SITC code 263) which is a key cash crop in Pakistan; fish (SITC code 03); hides and skins (SITC code 21); and cut flowers and foliage (SITC code ). But while some of these are important products in the domestic market, their share in agricultural exports is relatively low. In this regard, the case of cotton is particularly interesting. Cotton exports declined drastically over time (see Figure 1) as the domestic textile sector absorbed an increasingly large share of domestic cotton production. However, moving up the value addition chain is only part of the more complex cotton situation in Pakistan. The other and perhaps more revealing aspect is that export performance deteriorated because cotton output stagnated, and even declined in some years, leading to progressively smaller and eventually vanishing exportable surpluses. The main reasons behind output stagnation were the leaf curl virus and other pest attacks, and slow and unregulated adoption of BT cotton. Unlike India which has country’s rapidly transformed itself into the second-largest exporter of cotton in the world, cotton exports have been lagging. cotton and textile economy Pakistan’s Pakistan’s has been the subject of a detailed recent study (Cororaton and Orden, 2008) and will receive no further attention in this paper. Figure 1: Pakistan exports of cotton and cotton products Source: Pakistan Economic Survey 2007-08 III.2 Revealed comparative advantage in world markets Figure 2 presents the evolution of the RCA index over the period 1999-2008 for all SITC 1-digit level agricultural products mentioned above. Over the last decade Pakistan did not enjoy relative comparative advantage in livestock products. The RCA index for meat and for products & did not ‘Meat & preparations’ ’dairy eggs’ exceed 0.4 which is significantly lower than the threshold level of 1.0. Given that Pakistan has a large bovine population and the country is the fourth largest producer of fresh milk in the world, the low levels of relative export performance in this product category merit close attention. The RCA index for the and above 1.0 throughout ‘vegetable fruits’ group remained the decade (Figure 2). This suggests a revealed comparative advantage in the export
- Vegetables and fruit Each of these categories has several sub-categories and more than 20 disaggregated products were considered for this study. On the other hand, in this preliminary investigation also some other agricultural products were excluded. Among these are cotton (SITC code 263) which is a key cash crop in Pakistan; fish (SITC code 03); hides and skins (SITC code 21); and cut flowers and foliage (SITC code ). But while some of these are important products in the domestic market, their share in agricultural exports is relatively low. In this regard, the case of cotton is particularly interesting. Cotton exports declined drastically over time (see Figure 1) as the domestic textile sector absorbed an increasingly large share of domestic cotton production. However, moving up the value addition chain is only part of the more complex cotton situation in Pakistan. The other and perhaps more revealing aspect is that export performance deteriorated because cotton output stagnated, and even declined in some years, leading to progressively smaller and eventually vanishing exportable surpluses. The main reasons behind output stagnation were the leaf curl virus and other pest attacks, and country’s slow and unregulated adoption of BT cotton. Unlike India which has rapidly transformed itself into the second-largest exporter of cotton in the world, Pakistan’s cotton exports have been lagging. Pakistan’s cotton and textile economy has been the subject of a detailed recent study (Cororaton and Orden, 2008) and will receive no further attention in this paper. Figure 1: Pakistan exports of cotton and cotton products Source: Pakistan Economic Survey 2007-08 III.2 Revealed comparative advantage in world markets Figure 2 presents the evolution of the RCA index over the period 1999-2008 for all SITC 1-digit level agricultural products mentioned above. Over the last decade Pakistan did not enjoy relative comparative advantage in livestock products. The RCA index for ‘Meat & meat preparations’ and for ’dairy products & eggs’ did not exceed 0.4 which is significantly lower than the threshold level of 1.0. Given that Pakistan has a large bovine population and the country is the fourth largest producer of fresh milk in the world, the low levels of relative export performance in this product category merit close attention. The RCA index for the ‘vegetable and fruits’ group remained above 1.0 throughout the decade (Figure 2). This suggests a revealed comparative advantage in the export