Following months of negative reports about the state of the leather industry in Pakistan, February’s exports figures finally provided some positive news as exports rose 18.94% to reach $47.866 million, compared with $40.245 million in January. However, in spite of this upward trend exports were still 48.46% lower when compared with the $92.873 million reported in February 2006.

A breakdown of the figures showed that finished leather exports were $12.646
million in February, up 6.92% from $11.827 million in January, whilst leather goods exports improved 28.25% to $26.543 million from $20.697 million and footwear exports rose 12.38% to $8.677 million from $7.721 million.

For the first eight months of the fiscal year (July 2006 to February 2007) leather exports fell 27.84% to $555.739 million from $770.115 million, due to a significant decline in leather garments and leather goods exports.

During the eight-month period, the volume of finished leather exports fell 12.79% to 9,441,000m² worth $155,842 million compared with 10,913,000 m² valued at $182.645 million; leather goods (which includes leather garments, leather gloves and other leather goods) declined 34.43% to $326.275 million from $497.603 million; and footwear exports decreased 18.08% to 9,110,000 pairs worth $73.622 million compared with 11,497,000 pairs valued at $89.867 million in the same period of the prior year.