What Are The Factors Making Pakistan’s Exports Stagnant? Insight From Literature Review

Lowering exports is considered as one of the paramount reasons of widening trade deficit of Pakistan, which has become a long-standing challenge that country is facing since the beginning of the century. During the last two decades, the contribution of exports in GDP has been declined from 16 to 10% (World Bank, 2021). If we look at Pakistan’s share in global trade, it is dropped from 0.15% in 2005 to 0.12% in 2021. Export competitiveness of Pakistan is shrinking, while the competitors like Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam are experiencing expansion in export competitiveness. The stagnancy in Pakistan’s exports brings about a number of challenges like increasing current account deficit, burden of foreign debt, exchange rate, and other macroeconomic problems (Government of Pakistan, 2021-22; Defever et al., 2020). Various reasons of declining export are suggested by the economists and researchers. To gather concrete evidence, a comprehensive desk review or literature review is required to unleash what factors are bringing down Pakistan’ exports. For that purpose, the underlying piece of research aims to weave up a review of existing literature on exports and unfolds the significant factors which influence exports.