KARACHI - Pakistans trade deficit narrowed to $14.160 billion during the first ten months of current financial year (July-April 2008-09) as against $16.836 billion of the corresponding period of last fiscal. The year-on-year based growth in the trade deficit has declined by 15.90 percent during the period under review amid moderate contraction in imports and less than anticipated increase in export growth which caused the trade deficit to improve by 15.90 percent in July-April FY09. In the period of July-April FY09 (2008-09), Pakistans total exports amounted to $14.762 billion, indicating a decrease of 3.03 percent, from $15.222 billion in July-April FY08 while imports stood at $28.922 billion with modest 9.78 percent downward trend during the same course of prevailing fiscal as against $32.095 billion in the equivalent phase of previous financial year. The slowdown in the export growth is attributed to global financial crisis and extremely vulnerable security environment which posed imminent risks to the external sector. The massive negative growth posted by LSM during the previous few months due to acute energy shortages, high mark up and financing rates, worst law and order situation and demand shrinkage in the export-based industries could badly suffer the size of exports with the major trading partners in the months ahead. In addition to that federal government corrective measures to compress the growth in imports needs to be persistent as Pakistan must take more measures to cut on its petroleum imports either through looking into alternative fuel sources or demand management. It must be recalled that the trade data for the period July-March FY09 showed that the consumer durables, transport group and telecom sectors were responded positively to the import compression initiatives of the federal government. However, the growth in imports was coming from only a narrow range of imports such as the imports of petroleum and edibles commodities. The Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) reported on Tuesday that the MoM trade deficit dropped by 37.82 percent and down from $2.309 billion in April, 2008 to $1.435 billion during the single month of April this year. FBS trade break-up revealed that during April 2009, the MoM basis the exports fell by 23.92 percent as total exports reached $1.362b in the month of April 2009 from $1.790b of the same period of last fiscal whereas imports declined sharply, to $2.798b during the month of April of current financial year from $4.099b in April 2008. The growth in the monthly quantum of imports has significantly reduced by 31.74pc during the month under review. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance in its report had already mentioned that the downside risk to the implemented stabilisation programme apart from other factors might come from slowdown in exports and small fall in import growth.