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Pakistan imports August 2026: PBS's table puts machinery at $889 million, down 32%, crude at $666 a tonne, and the electrical-machinery call I made on Thursday was wrong
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#Pakistan imports#PBS#machinery imports#crude oil#steel prices#trade deficit

Pakistan imports August 2026: PBS's table puts machinery at $889 million, down 32%, crude at $666 a tonne, and the electrical-machinery call I made on Thursday was wrong

Amir Khan

$308.8 million.

On Thursday I wrote that if PBS's August table showed electrical machinery back under $400 million, I was wrong and July was a fiscal-year-start bulge, not a wave. The table is up. Electrical machinery printed $308.8 million. I was wrong.

The import file was posted on 18 September, three weeks after the provisional headline. It says Pakistan imported $5,847.7 million of goods in August, 15.2% less than July and 10.6% more than August 2025. Exports were $2,542.4 million. The deficit is $3,305 million, the figure Bol News printed on Sunday and $135 million wider than the 3 September estimate, because imports were revised up by $170 million.

Aerial view of a container terminal with red gantry cranes, captioned Trade Deficit Surges
From Pakistan Trade Deficit Widens 18% to $7.1bn in Two Months by DawnNews English

Half of my call held. The machinery group fell to $889.4 million, 32.2% below July's $1,311.3 million, as I said it would. It is still 14.1% above August 2025. The other half failed badly. Electrical machinery fell 43.7% in a month, from $549.0 million to $308.8 million. That is 38.0% above a year ago, not the 50% I predicted, and $141 million short of the $450 million floor I put under it.

Reading my own paragraph back, the mistake is plain. I took one month of $549 million and called it a level. Two months of PBS data say it was one month.

PBS lineAugust 2026July 2026August 2025
Machinery group$889.4m$1,311.3m$779.2m
Electrical machinery & apparatus$308.8m$549.0m$223.8m
Petroleum group$1,474.1m$1,276.7m$1,192.3m
Crude, landed price per tonne$666$578$497
Iron and steel, landed price per tonne$631$602$663
Iron and steel, tonnes287,128520,450343,639

Source: PBS, Import_August-2026.xlsx, dollar column. Per-tonne prices are value divided by quantity, my arithmetic on PBS's two columns.

Where did the money go? Oil. The petroleum group rose 15.5% in a month to $1,474.1 million, 25.2% of everything the country imported. Crude tonnage was up 21.3% on July, and the landed price of a tonne went from $578 to $666. At 7.3 barrels to the tonne that is roughly $91 a barrel, delivered.

92 News HD studio graphic on Pakistan's oil import bill
From Pakistan's Oil Import Bill Reaches Billions | Dr. Khaqan Najeeb Explains Fuel Pricing System by 92 News HD

A month is a lag. Brent was $107 when this site priced a cost sheet on 11 September and $102.4 on the OilPrice ticker at 11:10 this morning. Both readings sit well above the $91 that August's cargoes cost. September's crude will land dearer than August's.

Steel is the line to read twice. Only 287,128 tonnes of iron and steel came in, 44.8% less than July and 16.4% less than a year ago. But the landed price rose from $602 to $631 a tonne. Fewer tonnes, each one dearer. Scrap went the other way, as it did in July: 344,492 tonnes, 30.3% more than August 2025, at $583 a tonne, unchanged on the year. The melt shops are still buying. The re-rollers importing finished steel are not.

Stacked steel scrap at a Gujranwala yard
From Gujranwala scrap rates by Matel Paper

Inside the machinery group, one line is still rising. Construction and mining machinery printed $30.7 million, up 8.0% on July and 80.7% on a year ago, the only machinery line to grow in a month when every other one fell. Textile machinery fell again, to $28.4 million, 45.5% below last August. Office machines and data-processing equipment fell 46% on the month to $58.8 million. Power-generating machinery, the line a diesel-generator buyer sits in, was $48.5 million, 3.6% below last year.

Vehicles tell the same story as machines. CKD and SKD kits fell 14.9% to $208.6 million; built-up cars fell 58.1% to $24.1 million.

Pakistan auto industry 2026 thumbnail on trade deficit and CKD imports
From Pakistan Auto Industry 2026 – Trade Deficit, CKD Imports & Export Crisis by Muhammad Muaaz Qureshi

What the table does not say is why. There is no origin column, so "Chinese machinery" is not a sentence it supports. The Release Statement PDF that would carry PBS's own commentary was still a 404 at 09:20 this morning. Whether July's electrical surge was inverters, transformers or switchgear, the file does not know.

The export side is a footnote again. Engineering goods sold abroad: $32.9 million, down 20.6% on July and 5.7% on the year. Cutlery, $5.2 million, up 17.9%. Surgical instruments, $39.5 million, up 9.0%. For every dollar of engineering goods Pakistan sold in August it bought $27 of machinery. In July the ratio was $32.

What happens next

Two lines on a Q4 quote move in opposite directions after this table, and a buyer should treat them differently.

The equipment line floats. Importers bought $422 million less machinery in August than in July. Fewer buyers at the door is a soft price, and the buyer's market I described on Thursday is more of a buyer's market now, not less. Do not pay a September quote for a machine you need in December.

The steel line locks. A 45% drop in tonnage at a rising unit price means less finished steel in the pipeline and no cheaper tonne behind it. If you are quoting fabrication in Taxila or a panel in Lahore for Q4, fix the steel price in the quote this week and let the machine price wait.

InvestKaar thumbnail on the PBS trade data surprise
From Pakistan $3bn Surprise by InvestKaar

And the diesel line, which is a quarter of the country's import bill, is Rs 424.04 a litre at PSO, effective 19 September and unchanged this morning. Put that on the delivery line, not the Rs 398 of two weeks ago.

My second call, and the reader may hold me to this one too: PBS's September commodity file, due around 18 October, will show crude landing above $700 a tonne and the machinery group under $1 billion for a second month. The chain is short. August's tonne cost $91 a barrel; Brent has been above $100 on both days this site has checked it in September; and nothing in the August table says the machinery buyers came back. If crude prints under $650 a tonne, August was the peak and I have this backwards as well.

Sources