Pakistan’s Bureau of Statistics (PBS) September 2026 merchandise-trade summary, released on 2 October, shows exports rose 10.84% year on year in the July–September first quarter of fiscal 2026/27. The official workbook lists exports of US$8.423 billion, compared with US$7.599 billion in the same three months a year earlier. Imports increased from US$16.973 billion to US$19.215 billion, a rise of 13.21%. The merchandise trade-deficit magnitude therefore widened from US$9.374 billion to US$10.792 billion, up 15.13%. Export growth is a positive movement in the export flow, but imports grew faster over the quarter and the gap also became larger. These figures cover merchandise trade in the PBS tables; they are not a measure of trade in services or of the current-account balance. The comparison is against July–September 2025, not against the previous quarter.

September alone showed a stronger export month. The PBS workbook records exports of US$2.939 billion in September and US$2.532 billion in August, a month-on-month increase of 16.07%. Compared with US$2.499 billion in September 2025, exports were 17.61% higher year on year. Imports reached US$6.494 billion in September, up 11.50% from US$5.824 billion in August and 11.05% from US$5.848 billion a year earlier. The monthly merchandise deficit widened to US$3.555 billion from US$3.292 billion in August; against September 2025’s US$3.349 billion, it was 6.15% higher. A strong September export reading does not by itself explain the quarterly total: the three-month result also includes July and August, and the monthly growth rates use distinct comparison periods.

PBS reports the amounts in millions of US dollars; values in this article are expressed in billions through exact scale conversion, while the percentages are reproduced from the official table. The workbook marks September 2026 as “P” and August as “F.” It also notes that September data from the Federal Board of Revenue’s Data Retrieval System had not yet been received. The September observations may therefore be subject to an incomplete customs-data flow and could be revised in a later release. The PBS statistics page lists the September monthly summary and its workbook, while Associated Press of Pakistan reported the first-quarter totals on 3 October citing PBS. Both sources concern merchandise trade. Their figures should not be used to infer services exports, the current account or national-accounts output without separate data.

The central reading is a comparison of growth rates, not a causal explanation: imports expanded faster than exports during the first quarter, and the merchandise deficit was higher than in the corresponding period a year earlier. The summary table does not identify which products, trading partners or price-versus-volume movements account for the difference. Answering those questions would require commodity and country breakdowns, unit-value and quantity series, and care with the classifications used in each table. It is also important to check whether the September values change when the missing customs input is incorporated; the workbook explicitly flags that data gap. The quarter should therefore not be presented as a one-sided export success or as proof of a particular cause of external-balance pressure. This official snapshot establishes a rise in exports, a faster rise in imports and a wider nominal-dollar merchandise trade gap.