Export of hand-knitted woollen carpet, has declined by 9 percent in terms of quantity during the first six months of 2005/06, reports said.

Hand-knitted woollen carpet

Hand-knitted woollen carpet
(Photo source : sooryacarpets.com)

However, according to a government report, the export of hand-knitted woolen carpet, the second largest foreign currency earning exportable commodity, declined by just over 3 percent.

Nepal exported 759,033 square meters of woollen carpet during the first half of the current fiscal year, against 834,485 square meters recorded during the same period of the last fiscal year.

“In value terms, the export totaled US$ 40.04 million during the period,” statistics of Carpet and Wool Development Board (CWDB) stated. Its export for the same period of the last fiscal year was recorded at US$ 41.31 million.

The decline was attributed by the concerned officials to the continued slump recorded in the key European markets including Germany, which is the largest consumer of Nepali hand-knitted woollen carpet, reports The Kathmandu Post daily.

The CWDB data shows that the commodity’s export to Germany plunged by about 16 percent in quantity and over 14 percent in value terms.

Nepal exported a total of 344,080 square meters of woollen carpet worth US$ 14.42 million to Germany in the first half of 2005/06. It had exported 407,892 square meters of carpet worth US$ 16.85 million during the same period last year.

Export to the US, the second largest market, also plummeted by 7 percent to 165,910 square meters during the period. Despite the decline, the export fetched 0.7 percent higher value. Nepal’s export to the US was valued at US$ 12.44 million, according to the CWDB statistics.

While export to Belgium increased by 11.8 percent in value terms and touched US$1.89 million, export to the UK increased marginally to US$ 1.88 million. The CWDB data further shows that export of woollen carpet to Turkey fell by over 20 percent to US$ 1.38 million. Subsequent to the decline in woollen carpet export, import of raw wool recorded over 29 percent decline in quantitative terms during the first half of the current fiscal year.

According to the wool import recommendation data of the CWDB, Nepal imported a total of 1,615 tons of raw wool during the period. Its import had totalled 2,288 tons during the same period of the last fiscal year.

In value terms, the import of raw wool declined by 33.53 percent and stood at US$ 4.63 million during the period as against the import value of US$ 6.97 million recorded during the same period of the last fiscal year.