The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has started receiving data from the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and Pakistan Single Window (PSW), and the reconciled trade data will now be shared with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to details, after acknowledging the errors that had led to major discrepancies in trade figures, the PBS has begun collecting trade data from the FBR through both the Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) and PSW systems. This reconciled data will now also be shared with the WTO and IMF for the past several years.
According to a report, PBS has started receiving data from both PRAL and PSW. An FBR official said they briefed the IMF review mission during its last visit to Islamabad (September 28 to October 8, 2025), raising the issue of inconsistencies in trade data, which had widened to as much as $6 billion during the fiscal year 2024–25.
The IMF was informed that, like other countries, Pakistan reports its international trade data on the Trade Map website managed by the International Trade Centre (ITC). This reporting is done through the PBS, which relies on data provided by Pakistan Customs.
Over the past few years, the gap between Pakistan’s import data reported on the ITC platform and the export data reported by its trading partners has been steadily increasing. The discrepancy was particularly large in data reported by China, averaging around $4.5 billion annually.
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This difference, as reflected on the ITC Trade Map, was largely attributed to import under-invoicing in Pakistan, resulting in significant revenue losses, a major concern for the government.
As a result, on the Prime Minister’s directives, the FBR formed a committee in April 2025 to investigate inconsistencies in trade data, especially those concerning imports from China.
After reviewing the data from Customs and PBS, the committee found that PBS had been relying on a programmed query to extract trade data from the Pakistan Customs WeBOC (Web-Based One Customs) system.
Via Jang
