The incidence of women labour force participation is very low in Pakistan. According to the Labour Force Survey, 1999-2000 female participation rate was merely 14 percent of the total labour force. Even though average annual growth rate of female labour force participation has been increasing slightly in Pakistan; it was 4 percent in 1980-99 and has gone up to 5.1 percent during 1995-98,1 however, this rate is still very low as compared to the other South Asian countries—42 percent in Bangladesh, 41 percent in Nepal, 32 percent in India and Bhutan, 37 percent in Sri Lanka [World Bank (2002)]. This paper is an attempt to identify household related factors that lead to women participation in the economic activities. This issue has been taken up in a number of other studies.2 The innovative aspect of this paper is that it relates women’s decision to participate in economic activities with their empowerment—who makes the decision to participate in the labour force—whether it is the women themselves or others. We would like to state at the very onset that this paper is a first cut to explore the issues of women’s participation in economic activities and their and empowerment. We hope to get feedback in the conference to improve the technical aspects of this paper and explore other aspects of this issue.
In the present paper we have tried to examine Pakistan’s experience with exports and growth by constructing several measures of diversification and structural change in Pakistan’s exports from a dis-aggregated data over a period of 27 years (1972-73 to 1997-98). Then using these measures we have tested a number of relationships among the structure of exports, export growth, aggregate growth, and world growth. By looking at the evolution and structural change of exports by sectors over the long run, we find a number of interesting results. First, the degree of export diversification increased sharply from 1979 and continued till 1985. After 1985, and with the return of the democracy in the country. There was a marked reduction in the export diversification and it went back to pre-1979 level. Secondly, a crude association of ‘traditionality’ with primary products and ‘non-traditionality’ with manufactured exports fails to represent Pakistan’s experience. As Pakistan emerged from an import substitution period into a period of structural change and free trade, its true comparative advantage was more visibly expressed, thus some manufactured exports declined while some primary products grew. Third, the shortrun dynamics of diversification and structural change show a marked pattern. Most change in the composition of exports has taken place during periods of boom in the domestic economy but when the world economy was experiencing a relatively recessionary period.
Pakistan and India are the two largest economies in South Asia with very low levels of bilateral trade. This has been the result of border disputes and political tensions, but also of inward-looking import-substitution growth strategies. Trade (including official and unofficial) between the two countries stood at around US$ 2.5-2.6 billion in 2007/08 but it could potentially be as much as US$ 5-10 billion or two to four times its current levels. The Composite Dialogue Process (CDP) has led to substantial improvements in political relations over the last 5 years and trade relations have shown positive outcomes as well. This paper recommends that the process be strengthened further by restarting the stalled CDP, Pakistan granting most favored nation (MFN) status to India, continuing to reduce impediments to trade and trade logistics, and perhaps even considering the possibility of a free trade agreement (FTA) with India. JEL Classification: F19, 024.
Pakistan’s exports evolve broadly in line with total world imports. Accordingly, Pakistan’s share in world imports was remarkably stable during the last 20 years, ranging between a minimum of 0.12 percent in 1980 and a maximum of 0.18 percent in 1992. In 1999-2000, the share was 0.15 percent. This would suggest that Pakistan’s export performance was not worse than that of the world on average. Compared to regional competitors, however, the performance was unimpressive, especially when compared to China and Thailand throughout the 1980s and 1990s or compared to Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka during the 1990s. All these countries succeeded in achieving sustainable market share increases in total world imports (Figure 1). In light of the growing awareness about the importance of exports in the overall economy of Pakistan and in view of the unimpressive export performance of Pakistan vis-à-vis other countries in the region it would be interesting to study the export performance of Pakistan and analyse the possible reasons for this poor performance and see whether it is due to demand deficiency or is it something to do with the supply side of the issue.
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