What happened
Pakistan’s merchandise exports rose to $3.061 billion in January 2026, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday 2 February, breaking a five-month streak of monthly declines in the current fiscal year and offering the first positive year-on-year print since July 2025. Export proceeds grew 3.73 per cent over January 2025’s $2.951bn and rose 34.96 per cent month on month, Dawn reported on 3 February, citing the same PBS release.
The rebound is tentative. Exports had contracted every month from August to December 2025, with declines of 12.49pc, 3.88pc, 4.46pc, 14.54pc and 20.41pc respectively. In the first seven months of FY26 (July–January), cumulative export receipts were still down 7.09pc year on year at $18.195bn versus $19.583bn a year earlier, Dawn reported.
What is driving the uptick
The January print follows a relief package Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced in late January, which cut industrial electricity tariffs by Rs4.4 per unit, reduced wheeling charges to under Rs9 per unit, and lowered the State Bank of Pakistan’s export refinance rate from 7.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent. The package was aimed at textile and other energy-intensive exporters who had complained that high production costs were squeezing overseas sales.
Imports fell alongside exports. The import bill eased 1.4pc year on year to $5.786bn in January, narrowing the monthly trade deficit 6.61pc to $2.725bn from $2.918bn a year earlier. The narrower monthly gap masks a wider cumulative picture: the trade deficit for July–January FY26 still swelled 28.22pc year on year to $22.038bn, against $17.188bn over the corresponding period of FY25, Dawn reported, as imports rose 9.42pc over the same seven-month window while exports fell.
Why it matters
A single positive monthly print does not reverse a seven-month slide. The cumulative deficit widening by more than a quarter signals that the current-account recovery that drove SBP reserves to about $16.1bn in late January — the highest level since FY21 — still relies heavily on remittance inflows and IMF programme flows rather than goods-export earnings.
Whether the January figure marks a durable turning point depends on whether global textile demand picks up alongside the cost-side relief, and on whether the energy and credit measures announced in late January are sustained through the second half of FY26. The next PBS monthly summary, due in early March, will be the first test.
What is still uncertain
It is not yet clear how much of the January rise reflects order-book timing, a base effect from a weak January 2025, or a genuine response to the cost-side relief. Textile-exporter bodies had warned the cuts needed to be permanent to lift output; the federal government has not yet published a sunset date for the new tariff and refinance rates, and the PBS does not break out textile-only figures in its monthly summary.
Sources & reporting notes
This is a synthesis of published material, not eyewitness reporting. Sources were reviewed on 2 February 2026.
- Pakistan Bureau of Statistics — Monthly Summary on Foreign Trade Statistics for Jan 2026Published 2 February 2026 · Primary record: confirms the publication date of the January 2026 trade summary and lists the underlying Summary_Jan 2026 and Services_Summary_Dec 2025 documents.
- Dawn — Uptick in exports after five monthsPublished 3 February 2026 · Independent contemporaneous reporting citing the PBS release: confirms the $3.061bn January figure, the 3.73pc year-on-year rise, the 34.96pc month-on-month rise, the five-month streak of declines, the 7.09pc July–January cumulative contraction, the 28.22pc widening of the cumulative trade gap, and the link to PM Shehbaz Sharif's late-January Rs4.4/unit industrial power-tariff cut, the under-Rs9 wheeling-charge ceiling and the 7.5pc-to-4.5pc export-refinance rate cut.
