ISLAMABAD: Pakistan opened the new financial year with a mixed export scorecard meat shipments climbed sharply, tobacco exports more than doubled, but the country's food import bill grew faster than its food export earnings, according to trade figures the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics released for July 2026.
Pakistan Meat Exports
Focus Pakistan learned that the meat and meat preparations led the pack among traditional export categories. Exporters shipped 8,983 metric tons of meat abroad during the month, actually less than the 9,141 tons they sent out a year earlier. Yet the dollar value earned from those shipments rose to $47.001 million from $40.449 million a 16.20 percent increase. Fewer tons, more money: the numbers point to exporters commanding noticeably higher prices per shipment this July than they did last year.
Tobacco and Rice Exports Surge
Tobacco delivered the sharpest swing of the month. Exporters sent out 2,334 metric tons worth $6.861 million, compared with just 1,292 metric tons worth $3.976 million in July 2025. Both volume and value roughly doubled, pushing the value growth rate to 72.55 percent the fastest expansion across every category the PBS tracked.
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Rice exporters also had reason to celebrate. The country shipped 346,024 metric tons of rice in July, up from 293,166 tons a year earlier, and earned $199.950 million against $167.183 million previously. That's a 19.15 percent jump in export value, driven by genuine volume growth rather than price alone.
Oilseeds and nuts produced the month's most dramatic headline number. Export value surged 493.70 percent to $24.898 million, though the PBS data doesn't specify the previous year's comparative volume for this category, making the scale of the low base difficult to judge from the release alone.
Spices exports edged up 9.95 percent to $7.426 million on shipments of 2,905 metric tons. Fish and fish preparations barely moved: the country earned $22.544 million from 11,568 metric tons, compared with $22.447 million from 11,738 metric tons a year earlier essentially flat in value despite slightly lower volumes.
Add it all up and the country's entire food group posted export earnings of $437.078 million for July, up 2.47 percent from $426.555 million in July 2025. That's a modest headline number that hides the sharper individual swings in tobacco, rice and meat sitting underneath it.
Food Imports Outpace Export Growth
The import side tells a less comfortable story. Pakistan spent $805.447 million importing food items in July, up from $744.974 million a year earlier a rise of roughly 8.1 percent, more than three times the pace at which food export earnings grew. The food trade gap for the month works out to a deficit of $368.369 million, wider than the shortfall the country ran in July last year.
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For a government watching its external account closely, the message from this single month's data is straightforward: individual export categories are showing real strength, but food imports are climbing fast enough to eat into any gains the export side manages to book.