Pakistan Pakistan Economy Updates

[Fatman17]

When the wheels stop turning

EDITORIAL: The nationwide goods transporters’ strike has been deffered for 40 days after nine days of disruption,...

share.google

EDITORIAL: The nationwide goods transporters’ strike has been deffered for 40 days after nine days of disruption, but the economic damage has already been serious and the dispute itself remains unresolved. The Pakistan Textile Exporters Association estimates losses to exports and allied trade at nearly $900 million, with shipments missed, raw materials stranded and factories facing shortages. The distinction matters because this is only a pause: transporters have made clear that the strike can return if the government fails to honour its commitments.

 

[Fatman17]

When the wheels stop turning

EDITORIAL: The nationwide goods transporters’ strike has been deffered for 40 days after nine days of disruption,...

share.google

EDITORIAL: The nationwide goods transporters’ strike has been deffered for 40 days after nine days of disruption, but the economic damage has already been serious and the dispute itself remains unresolved. The Pakistan Textile Exporters Association estimates losses to exports and allied trade at nearly $900 million, with shipments missed, raw materials stranded and factories facing shortages. The distinction matters because this is only a pause: transporters have made clear that the strike can return if the government fails to honour its commitments.

Freight costs surge 372% after strike | The Express Tribune

Freight costs surge 372% after strike

share.google

 

[Fatman17]

CORPORATE WINDOW: The crossroads of collapse

As Afghanistan shifts imports towards Iran and Central Asia, Pakistan risks losing not only transit trade but also the industrial and commercial ecosystem built around it.

www.dawn.com

Five years after the Taliban returned to Kabul, Afghanistan’s economic relationship with Pakistan is undergoing a structural shift. For Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, particularly Peshawar, this is not simply a bilateral trade issue. It is increasingly a question of industrial resilience and competitiveness.

The clearest evidence is Afghanistan’s transit trade through Pakistan. Container traffic, which had risen to nearly 89,000 containers worth about $5 billion before the Taliban returned to power, briefly climbed to a record 102,886 containers valued at $6.7bn in FY23.

It then went into reverse. Volumes fell to 54,114 containers in FY24 and 42,959 in FY25, worth $1.36bn. In FY26, they collapsed to just 11,592 containers valued at $367 million, according to customs data cited in a recent Dawn report.

The numbers matter because they show that Pakistan’s October 2025 border restrictions did not create the decline; they accelerated a process that was already under way.

 

[Fatman17]

Importing cotton, exporting aquifers: the arithmetic of surrender

Pakistan imports raw cotton. Let that sentence settle before reading further. A country that once stood among the...

share.google

A country that once stood among the world’s leading cotton producers, that built its entire industrial base on domestic white gold, now buys its primary raw material from abroad. It imports cotton. This imported cotton is then processed using domestic groundwater, dyed with domestic groundwater, finished with domestic groundwater, and exported back as a triumph of industry. Every container of yarn, denim, and ready-made garments leaving Karachi Port carries thousands of litres of Punjab’s and Sindh’s aquifer water, paid for by the water table beneath our fields.

This is not a supply chain. It is hydrological “money laundering”. We import someone else’s raw cotton, launder it through our depleting aquifers, and book the foreign exchange as a national victory. The industry adapted by outsourcing the cultivation to foreign farmers and keeping the processing water problem at home. The laundering is structural, not individual.

This is absolutely insane

Surge in cotton production in Sindh

The province usually has limited water in March and April, but better flows recently have resulted in higher arrivals of phutti in factories so far this year.

share.google