A Proposal for Fiscal Incentives for the Raw-Jute Exports (Notes & Comments)

While jute is an important crop, jute policy of Pakistan has often been inadequate. Efforts to improve the productivity of jute and to pursue a price policy consistent with the long-term interest of jute in the external market have been peripheral and uncoordinated and all along not been commensurate with the gravity of the issues involved. In the twenty years since Pakistan came into existence, the world production of jute and allied fibres increased by nearly 300 per cent from a level of about 1.5 million metric tons during the period 1947-52 to 4.3 million tons during 1967/68, whereas Pakistan’s production of jute has stagnated at a level around 1.0 to 1.3 million tons per annum. As a result, Pakistan’s share in the world production has continuously declined from about 80 per cent in 1947/48 to only 30 per cent in 1967/68. In the same period the volume of world export trade in raw jute and jute goods increased by nearly 40 per cent whereas Pakistan’s exports increased only marginally by 8 per cent — its share in raw jute had declined in absolute terms which could hardly be compensated by the increase in exports of jute goods [6].