The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has told Pakistan to conduct a comprehensive review of its import data and statistical processes following the identification of discrepancies amounting to $30-35 billion in the country’s trade figures over the past seven years.
The most recent IMF staff report, published after the approval of a $1 billion tranche under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), highlighted the need to enhance Pakistan’s macroeconomic statistics.
As stated in the report, the inconsistencies in merchandise import data reported by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) have cast doubt on the reliability of official statistics, despite expectations that the balance of payments figures from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will not be significantly impacted.
To continue receiving support from the EFF, the IMF has told Pakistan to assess the quality of its import data, reconsider the methods utilised for data collection and aggregation, and compile a comprehensive set of revised statistics along with explanations for public dissemination.
Approval from a technical committee will be necessary for these measures.
The government has committed to rectifying the discrepancies and enhancing the timeliness, quality and coverage of macroeconomic data. Recent initiatives include the release of the first Agricultural Census in 15 years, in addition to the Labor Force Survey and Household Integrated Economic Survey.
The PBS is set to roll out a new Producer Price Index (PPI) and will begin data collection for three key surveys in fiscal year 2026, including the census of manufacturing industries, the survey of small and household manufacturing industries and the family budget survey.
In accordance with the Government Finance Statistics (GFS) roadmap, Pakistan has formed a central GFS unit tasked with regularly collecting and classifying fiscal operations data.
The integration of GFS mappings will facilitate the generation of reports that comply with international standards once the system upgrades are finalised.