FPCCI President Atif Ikram Sheikh has said that the US is one of the few countries in the world with which Pakistan enjoys a bilateral trade surplus and Pak-US trade volume has crossed $7 billion mark in 2023 and continues to increase in 2024 as it has crossed $6.3 billion in the first 10 months of January-October 2024.
According to a FPCCI statement issued today, Mr Sheikh said that we believe that this volume can potentially be doubled within a short span of few years – given the demand of Pakistani products in the US, surging information technology exports and anticipated diversification of Pakistani exports basket for the US.
Sheikh stated that the US GSP Program might be renewed and expanded, so Pakistani exporters should remain agile and committed to make full use of the opportunities the enormous export market of the US offerd to Pakistan. The 55 percent Pakistani exports to the US comprise textiles; however, other sectors are catching up as IT exports to the US have crossed the $1 billion psychological mark.
FPCCI FPCCI Saquib Fayyaz Magoon said that apart from textiles, Pakistan should focus on IT, pharma, jewelry and human resource exports to the US like our neighboring India has done this on a mega scale. Pakistani exporters need to maintain quality, standards and compliance of their exports and the Pakistani government needs to ensure regionally-competitive cost of doing business.
Ambassador of Pakistan in the US Rizwan Saeed Sheikh said that Pakistan had a very large and influential diaspora of 1 million Pakistani-Americans in the US while Pakistan is the largest importer of American cotton in the world. He added that 40,000 Pakistani doctors are working in America and 5,000 Pakistani nursing staff will soon be exported to the US.
Ambassador Sheikh explained that only the economies of California and Texas alone are the world’s 4th and 6th largest economies respectively,