Forecasting Exports and Imports by using Autoregressive (AR) with Seasonal Dummies and Box-Jenkins Approaches: A Case of Pakistan

Abstract

This research aims to evaluate two econometric models to forecast imports and exports for the financial year (FY) 2020. For this purpose, we used the annual exports and imports data of Pakistan from FY2002 to FY2019. Thus, in this regard, we employed, and compared the results of two econometrics models such as Box Jenkins or Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), and Auto-Regressive (AR) with seasonal dummies. For examining the precision of forecasting, we employed mean absolute error and root mean square error approaches. The findings of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) reveal that the ARIMA or Box Jenkins approach provides better accuracy of the forecast for the exports as compared to the AR model with dummies. However, Auto-Regressive (AR) model has demonstrated more precision for the imports as compared to the Box Jenkins model. Hence, the projected forecasting for the growth of export is 1.87% for the FY2020 and projected forecasting for the import demonstrates a negative variation of -1.61% for the FY2020. The findings of the undertaken study recommend the policymakers of Pakistan to take corrective measures to increase exports and to prevent the country from the trade deficit. The policymakers of Pakistan should give more incentives to the exporters and decrease the cost of doing business to be more competitive than the regional economies such as India, Bangladesh, and China.