Pakistan has been under the burden of economic recession and debt for a long time. Annoyed by this, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has clearly asked the Pakistani government to publicly disclose and resolve the manipulation of $ 11 billion in its trade figures. According to a report by the Express Tribune, Pakistani government institutions had misled the IMF by providing false data in the last two years.
The report quoted government sources as saying that the import figures reported by the Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) were $ 5.1 billion less than the import data reported by the Pakistan Single Window (PSW) for the financial year 2023-24. This difference increased to $ 5.7 billion in the subsequent financial year.
The PSW import figures are considered more comprehensive and accurate. Most significantly, these figures were higher than the State Bank of Pakistan’s freight-on-board (FOB) import data, which is used to calculate the country’s external balance.
The IMF had approached the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) and the Ministry of Planning and Development before the review meeting. In the meetings, the IMF recommended that Pakistan adopt a transparent communication policy to clarify discrepancies in trade data and changes in procedures, so as to remove mistrust between the government and data users.
Pakistani officials have admitted that the trade data submitted to the Geneva-based International Trade Centre was not comprehensive and some import data was missing from it. They said that this under-reporting was a result of the shift from PRAL (under the Federal Board of Revenue) to PSW (an independent unit with customs officials) as the main trade data source.
