Pakistan has told the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — the lender that supports the country’s economic programme — that official trade figures carried a discrepancy of more than $18 billion over five years, from fiscal year 2020-21 through 2024-25. According to top official sources, a high-powered committee’s report to the Fund states that the gap has been identified and reconciled.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the national statistics agency, prepared a detailed note for the committee on the shift in trade data sources from PRAL, an older customs IT setup, to the Pakistan Single Window (PSW), the newer single digital gateway for trade clearance. That material went to the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Finance and was also shared with the IMF.
Why the numbers diverged
On directions from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), the tax and customs authority, first set up a committee in 2025 after bilateral figures with China showed a large mismatch — especially between Pakistan’s recorded imports from China and China’s recorded exports to Pakistan.
That review found that import data used by the FBR’s Directorate of Research & Statistics and by the PBS, drawn from WeBOC (Web-Based One Customs), had not been comprehensively updated since 2017. Goods Declarations introduced later were therefore missing from the dataset used for official reporting. Those excluded categories covered growing import flows and left reported import values understated.
When the finance minister formed a further committee to examine moving the source of published trade data from PRAL to PSW, year-by-year comparisons showed the spread widening: about $1.4 billion in 2020-21, $2.527 billion in 2021-22, $2.402 billion in 2022-23, $5.572 billion in 2023-24, and $6.224 billion in 2024-25 — more than $18 billion in total.
Analysts on the committee linked most of the rise to how facilitation-scheme Goods Declarations were counted. PSW data covered 15 declaration types against seven in the older PRAL-based series used by the PBS. Other declaration categories showed only minor differences, pointing to newly added or expanded reporting lines rather than a breakdown of legacy records. The same analysis put the import-data divergence at roughly $1.4 billion in FY2020-21 and about $6.2 billion in FY2024-25.
What officials recommended next
The FBR-led committee called for integrating PBS and FBR research systems with the PSW, reviewing the reporting process every year, and building a bilateral trade-data exchange with major partners so gaps are caught earlier. The PBS was also told to work closely with Chinese authorities and the International Trade Centre so Chinese goods bound for Afghanistan that only transit through Pakistan are reflected correctly.
Timeline: what has happened so far
- 2017 onward: WeBOC-based import series used for official reporting were not comprehensively updated as new Goods Declarations appeared.
- 2025: On Prime Minister’s Office directions, the FBR formed a committee after large China bilateral trade mismatches surfaced.
- June–July 2025: PBS consultative workshops flagged that PSW-based figures implied a larger trade deficit and that any switch needed careful handling given IMF engagement.
- FY2020-21 to FY2024-25: Committee scrutiny put the cumulative PRAL–PSW trade data difference at over $18 billion, peaking near $6.2 billion in the latest year.
- After the reviews: Officials say the discrepancy has been identified and reconciled, and the findings have been shared with the IMF.
Workshops in mid-2025 had already warned that PSW numbers showed a higher trade deficit. Officials stressed that moving to the newer source had to be managed carefully while Pakistan remained in talks with the IMF. The latest report frames the episode as a data-coverage and systems issue that has now been lined up for correction and closer monitoring.
Aasan alfaaz mein
Pakistan ne IMF ko bataya hai ke pichhle paanch saalon mein trade ke official figures mein $18 billion se zyada ka farq tha. Yeh farq purane aur naye customs computer systems ke beech tha, khas tor par imports ke hisaab mein. Hukumat ke mutabiq ab yeh masla pehchan liya gaya hai aur theek kar diya gaya hai. Aam logon ke liye seedha matlab yeh hai ke mulk ab zyada sahi trade deficit dikha sakta hai, jo IMF aur economic planning ke liye zaroori hai.
