Pakistan’s solar story was built not by design, but by market forces and consumers – with one critical exception. While western economies erected tariff walls against Chinese solar imports, Pakistan took the opposite path, maintaining a zero-rated tax regime on solar PV imports that held from 2013 until mid-2025. The government didn’t plan the revolution, but it left the door wide open. Going from under 1 GW of solar PV imports in 2018 to over 51 GW by early 2026 represents one of the fastest consumer-led energy transitions on record, and one that drove a 40% drop in oil and gas imports between 2022 and 2024.
Source: CREA