Pakistan has reported a discrepancy exceeding $18 billion in its trade data over five fiscal years to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), following a review that identified differences between two systems used to record imports. The government says the gap has been identified and reconciled.
A high-level official committee submitted its findings to the IMF after the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) examined differences between data obtained through PRAL and the Pakistan Single Window (PSW), according to a report by a national daily.
The PBS prepared a detailed report on the transition between the two data sources and submitted it to the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Finance. The report was also shared with the IMF.
The discrepancy covers fiscal years 2020-21 through 2024-25, with the gap between the two datasets increasing significantly over the period. The committee’s analysis found the following differences between PRAL and PSW trade data:
| FY2020-21 | $1.4 billion |
| FY2021-22 | $2.527 billion |
| FY2022-23 | $2.402 billion |
| FY2023-24: | $5.572 billion |
| FY2024-25 | $6.224 billion |
The difference rose from $1.4 billion in FY2020-21 to more than $6.2 billion in FY2024-25. Across the five-year period, the cumulative discrepancy exceeded $18 billion.
The review found that the differences were concentrated in specific categories of goods declarations recorded in the two systems, rather than being evenly distributed across all import data.
China trade mismatch triggered investigation
The issue first came under scrutiny in 2025, when the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), acting on the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office, formed a committee to investigate discrepancies in bilateral trade figures with China.
The review focused in particular on the mismatch between Pakistan’s recorded imports from China and China’s reported exports to Pakistan. The committee found that import data used by the FBR’s Directorate of Research and Statistics and the PBS, generated through the WeBOC system, had not been comprehensively updated since 2017.
As a result, imports recorded under certain Goods Declarations introduced later were not included in the dataset used for official reporting. The omitted categories represented an increasing volume of imports, leading to underreporting in the recorded import figures.
The committee recommended integrating the PBS and the Directorate of Research and Statistics with the PSW, reviewing reporting procedures annually, and establishing bilateral trade data exchange mechanisms with major trading partners.
It also recommended closer coordination between the PBS, Chinese authorities, and the International Trade Centre to ensure that Chinese exports to Afghanistan transiting through Pakistan were properly reflected in trade statistics.
Following these recommendations, the PBS held consultative workshops in June and July 2025. Participants raised concerns that data derived from the PSW showed a larger trade deficit and cautioned that any change in the official data source needed to be handled carefully given Pakistan’s engagement with the IMF.
The finance minister subsequently formed a committee to examine the transition from PRAL-based reporting to PSW data. The committee’s comparison covered 15 Goods Declaration categories under PSW data and seven under the PRAL-based data used by the PBS.
The analysis identified the facilitation scheme category as the principal source of the widening gap. Other categories showed comparatively minor differences, suggesting that the discrepancies were concentrated in newly introduced or expanded reporting categories.
The findings indicate that differences in the coverage of import declarations contributed to the growing divergence between the two datasets.
The government has said the discrepancy has been identified and reconciled. The review also recommended improvements to data integration, regular reporting checks, and information-sharing with major trading partners to reduce the risk of similar inconsistencies in the future.
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