ISLAMABAD: The country’s trade data is said to have been overreported by USD6.4 billion by Pakistan Bureau of statistics (PBS) during the fiscal year 2024-25 due to flawed methodology. Insiders revealed a discrepancy of USD 1-1.5 billion between Aptma’s compilation of cotton import figure of USD 2.2 billion (State Bank of Pakistan) against USD 2.65 billion (Pral) in FY25, while Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in its trade release for June 2025 reported only USD 1.27 billion worth of cotton imports in FY25.
According to the insiders, upon investigation, the following was confirmed by PBS: (i) transaction-wise import data is recorded in the WEBOC system through electronic goods declarations submitted by the importer; (ii) based on this, import data files are created by Pral on a regular basis using a query that filters relevant data, and circulated to relevant ministries and departments per their requirements; (iii) one of the columns in the data is the “Goods Declaration Type” that references the group/policy/scheme under which the goods have been imported, for example, under the Export Facilitation Scheme or for Home Consumption, etc.
As new schemes are implemented by the government, the categories in the GD type are also expanded. Originally there were 8 categories, and over the years these have increased to around 16 categories.
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The query based on which Pral was filtering data to forward it to other ministries and departments including PBS was not updated since 2017 causing all imports made under new schemes added since then, including the Export Facilitation Scheme, to be filtered out of the import data files that were transmitted onwards to various government agencies, including PBS for compilation and publication of trade statistics.
As a result, the import data PBS has been publishing since 2017 has been under-reported across all sectors. While the discrepancy is present throughout, it grew significantly larger over the past year as imports under the Export Facilitation Scheme skyrocketed. Resultantly, the PBS trade release for June 2025 (incl. figures for the full FY25) underreported FY25 cotton imports by USD 1.4 billion, textile group imports—a significant share of which was yarn imported under EFS—by $3.1 billion, and overall imports by $6.4 billion.
As a direct consequence of this, the balance of trade in goods reported by PBS is over-reported by USD 6.4 billion. Policies and decisions made by the Government of Pakistan on the basis of the referenced trade statistics published by PBS, likely including the recent wave of tariff rationalization, are therefore based on incorrect data.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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