Pakistan’s regional trade deficit across nine nearby markets stood at $4.97bn from July to September 2026, Dawn reported. The paper said its figures draw on State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) data. It put the gap 26.62 per cent above $3.93bn in the matching quarter a year earlier.
Which countries are counted?
The group includes China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, as well as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Iran and Nepal. The $4.97bn total covers those nine markets, not Pakistan’s trade with every country.
How did exports and imports move?
Dawn put exports to the group at $944.24m, 6.72 per cent lower than a year earlier. It reported imports of $5.92bn, up 19.79 per cent. The report’s stated deficit is presented separately here rather than recalculated from those figures.
What did the report say about China?
China accounts for most of the increase in Dawn’s breakdown. The report assigns $858.808m of the wider gap to growth in the bilateral imbalance with China, about 82.18 per cent of the group’s total change. It put exports to China at $663.57m and imports from China at $5.82bn for the quarter.
What changed with India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan?
Dawn reported no recorded exports to India in the quarter. It put imports from India at $61.74m, up 68.90 per cent. For Bangladesh, it reported exports of $174.77m, down 2.96 per cent, and imports of $13.88m, down 36.11 per cent.
The Afghanistan figures need a caveat. Dawn reported exports of $18.86m and imports of $0.25m for the quarter. The same report says trade with Afghanistan, including exports, had been suspended since October 10, 2025. It does not explain how those statements relate. The figures alone do not confirm that cross-border trade resumed.
Why are these figures different from PBS totals?
SBP’s trade series uses export proceeds and import payments recorded through banks. Its notes say that relevant information about trade outside banking channels is also collected and added. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) records goods crossing customs boundaries. SBP values imports on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, while PBS uses cost, insurance and freight (CIF) values. These series use different methods, so the nine-market figure should not be treated as Pakistan’s nationwide PBS trade balance. SBP explains the difference between its data and PBS data.
The Q1 regional figures in this explainer are single-source: they come from Dawn’s report, which attributes them to SBP data. The underlying country-by-country SBP tables were not independently opened for this article.
