Pakistan In Focus - Trade deficit shrinks over 28pc to $13.8bn.

Pakistan's trade deficit shrank over 28 percent to $13.8 billion in first seven months of the current fiscal year due to import compression, as exports showed negative growth for the third consecutive month, which by now should have been a main concern for Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Trade figures, released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, showed that exports again posted negative growth both on a year-on-year and month-on-month basis in January, pulling cumulative export growth in Jul-Jan down to just 2.1 percent.

It was the third successive month when exports went down. In October 2019, export receipts amounted to $2.024 billion, which fell to $2.011 billion in November, $1.993 billion in December and $1.97 billion in January, showed the PBS statistics.

Pakistan cannot get rid of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) permanently until it ensures non-debt creating inflows on a sustainable basis. Exports are the most important source of non-debt creating foreign exchange earnings.

Total exports stood at...