Revealed Comparative Advantage and Pakistan’s Global Leather Products Potential among Selected Leather Exporters: New Evidence from Kaplan-Meier Survival Function

Abstract

One Of the key objectives of this study is to examine Pakistan’s global leather and leather products competitiveness by utilizing Balassa revealed comparative advantage (BRCA) indices and revealed symmetric comparative advantage indices (RSCA) from 1996 to 2020. Pakistan’s agricultural sector is contributing 19.5% of GDP while, livestock is ranked as the second largest sector of the agriculture sector with a 50% share of value-added goods, and together 10.8% share in GDP. The abundance of raw materials and low cost of production leads to the country a comparative advantage from global perspective. Our findings indicate that Pakistan has comparatively high BRCA index value in hides and skin and leather products that reveal the potential of higher exports and more foreign exchange earnings from this sector at selected HS-06 digits level of products. Additionally, Moreover, the position among various leather product groups under the hides and skin sector indicates a ‘competitive and threatening’, these findings facilitate to the stakeholders and policy makers to improve the quality of livestock and related sectors to enhance economy growth and development of the country.