Pakistan’s current account deficit for July and August was $543 million, down 36 percent from $853 million a year earlier (Express Tribune).
The monthly path
| | | |—|—| | July (revised) | $445m | | August | $98m | | August 2025 | $324m |
What is underneath it
| August | Value | Change | |—|—|—| | Goods and services exports | $3.33bn | +5pc | | Imports | $6.64bn | +8pc | | Goods deficit | $3.17bn | +10.4pc | | Services exports | $872m | +29pc | | — of which IT | $394m | +17pc | | Remittances | $3.66bn | +17pc |
July-August remittances were about $7.3 billion.
The improvement is real and it is not being earned by trade
Imports grew faster than exports in August, and the goods deficit widened by more than a tenth. On merchandise alone the position got worse.
What produced the headline improvement is two things Pakistanis do rather than Pakistan makes: money sent home by workers abroad, and services sold from desks — IT exports at $394 million and a services line up 29 percent.
The report’s own conclusion is blunt: Pakistan “is drifting towards a services-and-remittances external account while merchandise trade stays anemic”.
Why that matters beyond the accounting
A deficit financed by remittances is stable while the labour market in the Gulf holds and unstable the moment it does not. Nearly half of the August inflow came from Saudi Arabia and the UAE — the two countries currently absorbing missile and drone attacks.
This newspaper wrote on 10 September that an inflow the state does not manage is one the state cannot defend. That has not become less true in a week in which a drone was destroyed near Makkah.
The other pressure
Imports are about to get more expensive in dollar terms regardless of volume. Brent passed $107 this week and petrol here has risen 13.1 percent in eleven days. The oil bill sits in the goods line that is already widening.
What is not established
No full-year current account projection was reported. The July figure is revised and the reporting does not state from what, and no breakdown of import categories was published.
[Image: File photo via The Express Tribune]
