Pakistan’s trade figures in FY2024–25 reveal troubling imbalances, as surging import volumes — especially in machinery and transport sectors — collided with underwhelming export performance. While some categories offered modest relief, such as a dip in petroleum imports, the overall picture showed a growing dependence on foreign goods. These shifting trade dynamics, compounded by a failure to meet export targets, intensified pressure on the country’s fragile external account.
Pakistan’s textile export lifeline limped forward in FY2025, inching up by a mere 7.39% to clock in at $17.88 billion—an underwhelming rise from the previous fiscal’s $16.65 billion, as revealed in official disclosures. This lukewarm progression, though technically the second most robust figure recorded in half a decade, starkly undershoots the striking 25.5% leap of FY2022, when the sector touched an apex of $19.33 billion.
Despite its longstanding crown as the spine of Pakistan’s foreign trade portfolio, the textile realm continues to stagger under the weight of endemic fragilities. Industry voices and trade observers echo a persistent lament: an excessive tilt toward governmental lifelines, parochial market orientation, and lethargy in venturing into high-value segments have shackled the sector’s ascent. Innovation remains anemic, and diversification, a distant ambition.
Insights extracted from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics underscore this uneven trajectory. Select subsectors—knitwear, ready-to-stitch attire, and bedding ensembles—delivered respectable figures, scaling up by 13.68% to $5.01 billion, 15.85% to $4.128 billion, and 11.1% to $3.11 billion, respectively. Towel consignments edged higher too, by 2.6%, to settle at $1.08 billion. Yet the stalwarts of yesteryears faltered—cotton fabric shipments withered by 3.05% to $1.81 billion, while raw cotton thread exports plummeted by an unsettling 28.76%, scraping $680.7 million.
June 2025 offered a glimmer of improvement: textile cluster exports ascended 7.59% to hit $1.52 billion, surpassing June 2024’s tally of $1.41 billion. However, the broader export landscape reflected turbulence. Agrarian commodities, once solid earners, slipped. Overall food exports receded by 3.4% to $7.11 billion. Rice, a marquee forex contributor, plunged 14.7% to $3.35 billion. Within that, Basmati dipped by 5.3% to $830 million, while other strains cratered by 17.4%, slumping to $2.5 billion.
The livestock and produce corridors fared no better. Meat dispatches shrank by 3.2% to $495 million. Fruit sales eroded by 10.3% to $308 million, and vegetables plunged 14.5% to rest at $367.6 million. Contrastingly, marine exports defied the trend—fish and seafood surged by 13.4% to anchor at $465 million, while sugar, propelled by anomalous trade factors, skyrocketed 1,851% to reach $411.1 million.
Sports merchandise also dimmed. The sector slid 2.74% to land at $385.5 million, with football exports tumbling 9.7% to $229.8 million. On a brighter note, surgical implements nudged up 1.6% to $451.7 million. Cement exports—often a bellwether of regional demand—grew robustly by 23.7%, peaking at $329.8 million.
In the chemical domain, overall growth came in at 5.17%, summing up to $1.57 billion. This uptick was driven by plastic exports, which ballooned 17.2% to $469.2 million, and pharmaceutical shipments that catapulted 34% to $457.4 million—signs of latent potential in Pakistan’s often-overlooked industrial sub-ecosystems.
The cumulative portrait painted by these figures is one of paradox—momentary flourishes amid persistent stagnation. The nation’s export machinery, particularly textiles, seems to hover in limbo: not quite in decline, yet far from transformative resurgence.
In parallel, Pakistan’s import ledger bore signs of shifting economic undercurrents. Petroleum acquisitions slid by 5.76%, totaling $15.93 billion — a small reprieve for the current account strain. Meanwhile, machinery inflows swelled by 13.37% to $9.63 billion, propelled by capital expenditure in the textile and energy domains.
Within the petroleum suite, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stood out as the lone climber, with inflows vaulting 33.66% to $1.05 billion. Other categories contracted notably: refined petroleum products dwindled 10.3% to $5.96 billion, liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports slipped 11.9% to $3.47 billion, and crude oil imports retreated by 1.54% to $5.44 billion. The machinery intake was buoyed chiefly by a striking 61.5% upsurge in textile equipment imports, now standing at $241.2 million, and a 47.8% rise in power generation apparatus to $616.2 million. Construction and mining gear rose 46.8% to $138.3 million, while electrical machinery logged a 16.6% increase to $3.82 billion. Agricultural equipment too posted a 20% bump to $109.6 million. In contrast, telecom-related machinery retreated 11.3% to $2.1 billion, with mobile device imports alone shrinking 21.3% to $1.49 billion.
Transport-sector imports, on the other hand, ballooned by 32.7%, reaching $2.44 billion — a development drawing unease as it fuels foreign exchange depletion, especially due to the uptick in CKD (completely knocked down) and SKD (semi-knocked down) vehicles. This particular category surged 57.8% to $1.59 billion. Disaggregated figures reveal that motorcar imports rose 41.5% to $1.103 billion, while heavy vehicles like buses and trucks soared 132% to $442.3 million. Motorcycle imports also ticked up by 22.1% to $48 million. Additionally, fully built-up (FBU) car imports reached $278.2 million.
Against this backdrop, the government fell short of its export ambitions for FY2024–25. Figures from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) lay bare a widening chasm in trade. Exports closed at $32.106 billion, narrowly missing the official target of $32.341 billion. Meanwhile, import volumes overshot expectations, hitting $58.38 billion — outstripping the $57.283 billion benchmark.
This divergence inflated the annual trade deficit to $26.274 billion, surpassing the forecasted shortfall of $24.941 billion. While exports did rise 4.67% year-over-year, imports escalated by a heftier 6.57%, exacerbating stress on the nation’s already precarious external financing apparatus.
Ultimately, the interplay of swelling import costs and underwhelming export performance continues to tighten the noose around Pakistan’s fragile economic equilibrium. Despite pockets of industrial growth and increased investment in energy and textiles, Pakistan’s inability to restrain rising imports or meet export expectations has widened its trade deficit beyond official projections. The larger-than-anticipated import bill, driven by luxury vehicles, machinery, and underperforming export categories, underscores the urgent need for structural reforms, strategic export diversification, and prudent import controls to stabilise the nation’s external economic position.