Pakistan’s merchandise exports declined by approximately 6 percent to around $30 billion in fiscal year 2025-26, falling nearly $2 billion short of the previous year’s figure, according to provisional data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and analysed by brokerage firm Topline Securities. The State Bank of Pakistan is expected to release its more comprehensive Balance of Payments data in the coming weeks, which will provide a fuller picture of actual foreign exchange inflows including services exports.
The primary driver of the decline in goods exports was a sharp fall in rice export earnings, which dropped by more than $1 billion as global prices normalised following the easing of India’s export restrictions that had boosted Pakistan’s rice competitiveness in international markets during the previous year. Lower export volumes compounded the impact of falling prices, with several other agricultural commodities and non-textile products also remaining under pressure throughout the year. Textile exports held broadly stable overall, with value-added textile products showing some improvement, though gains in that segment were insufficient to offset the declines recorded across other export categories.
Despite the weakness in merchandise exports, Pakistan’s services sector delivered a meaningful counterbalance. Information technology and information technology-enabled services exports are projected to grow by nearly 20 percent during fiscal year 2025-26, continuing the strong trajectory that has characterised the sector’s performance over recent years, with the growth in technology services contributing directly to keeping total goods and services exports close to the $40 billion level. Topline Securities estimates that Pakistan’s combined goods and services exports reached $40.4 billion in fiscal year 2024-25 and are expected to close at approximately $40.1 billion in fiscal year 2025-26, a slight decline but one that reflects the stabilising role of services growth in partially offsetting the contraction in merchandise trade. The data reinforces the increasingly important structural role that information technology exports are playing in Pakistan’s overall trade balance, with the sector’s growth providing a degree of resilience to the country’s export earnings that goods-only figures do not fully capture.
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