Charter of the Economy An important finding is the high level of sensitivity of Pakistan’s exports to prices, both in dollars and in rupees. This has not been adequately emphasized before. The growth in$ value of Pakistan’s exports, exports of South Asian countries and world trade is shown in Figure 16.1. Pakistan’s exports performed well from 2000 to 2010 and, more or less, kept pace with the rise in exports of other South Asian countries and the world economy. However, the growth in exports of the country started falling from 2011 onwards. Further, world trade has lost much of its buoyancy in the last decade. The slowdown in export growth since 2010 has meant that on average the growth annually has been less than 2 percent, as compared to over 9 percent in the previous decade. Meanwhile, other South Asian countries, like India and Bangladesh, have continued to show robust growth with a growth rate of almost 9 percent. Today, the exports of Bangladesh are almost twice that of Pakistan and of India are thirteen times larger. Figure 16.1: Index of Value of Exports of Pakistan, South Asia and The Global Economy 800 [2000= 100] 700 631 600 500 South Asia World 300 400 300 250 288 200 Pakistan 100 0 2000 2010 2019 Source: World Bank. The question is what has been happening to dollar prices and the exchange rate? Both play a key role in determining the profitability of exports. The trends in these two magnitudes are given in Table 16.1. The dollar price index of exports rose rapidly from 2000-01 and 2010-11 when world trade was witnessing a boom. However, it has fallen by almost 16 percent since then. The 154