The federal government is set to present the Economic Survey 2025-26 today, Thursday, confirming that major economic targets have been missed. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, along with his economic team, will launch the survey for the outgoing fiscal year. The Economic Survey, released ahead of the annual federal budget, provides detailed insights into the country's socio-economic performance over the past year.
Key Economic Indicators
The survey highlights trends, achievements, and challenges across major sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, industry, services, energy, information technology, telecommunications, capital markets, health, education, transport, and communication. The government has missed targets for GDP growth, inflation rate, savings, and investment. The economy is expected to grow by 3.70% in the current fiscal year, a revision from earlier projections of 4.2%.
International financial institutions had already projected Pakistan's GDP growth at around 3.6% for the outgoing fiscal year. The IMF estimated 3.6%, the World Bank projected 3%, and the Asian Development Bank forecasted 3.5%. The size of the economy rose to $452.1 billion in FY26 from $410.96 billion in FY25, mainly driven by growth in the services sector, followed by industry and livestock. Per capita income slightly increased to $1,901 in FY26, the lowest in the region, up from $1,824 in FY25, based on the 2023 population census.
Investment and Savings
The government has missed two targets of increasing investment and savings as a share of the national economy. Investment remained stagnant at 14.4%, while savings plunged further to 14%.
Sectoral Growth Rates
The provisional growth rates in agriculture, industry, and services are 2.89%, 3.51%, and 4.09% respectively. In agriculture, important crops showed modest growth of 0.65% due to mixed trends: wheat (+4.3% from 28.396 to 29.605 MT), maize (-2.68% from 9.037 to 8.794 million tons), rice (+2.80% from 9.723 to 9.998 million tons), sugarcane (+6.20% from 84.24 to 89.45 million tons), and cotton (-0.5% from 7.084 to 7.052 million bales).
Other crops showed a growth of 2.43% despite high growth of 19.74% in the previous year, due to high growth in gram (50.4%), potato (27.6%), mangoes (11.6%), banana (30.8%), turmeric (25.1%), and chillies (9.2%). Cotton ginning and miscellaneous components registered a modest growth of 0.07% because of low cotton production. Livestock increased by 3.75% compared to 2.95% due to a 3.46% increase in output and a decrease in green fodder (-4.5%). Forestry and fishing posted normal growth of 2.02% and 1.66% respectively.
Industry Performance
Industry in 2025-26 showed a growth of 3.51% provisionally. Despite an increase in coal production (4.52%), mining and quarrying posted a modest growth of 0.38% due to decreases in natural gas (-2.63%), crude oil (-0.38%), and other minerals. Large scale manufacturing, based on the Quantum Index of Manufacturing (QIM) for July-March, witnessed a growth of 6.11% with mixed trends, mainly due to positive contributions in food (9.77%), tobacco (11.70%), petroleum products (10.92%), rubber products (14.26%), electrical equipment (11.87%), automobiles (61.66%), transport equipment (39.93%), furniture (20.45%), and other manufacturing (football) (23.06%).
Electricity, gas, and water supply industry contracted by 10.63% primarily due to a high base effect from FY2024-25 (+29.60%), lower energy subsidies, and slower growth in output from WAPDA and companies. Despite a high base growth of 8.77% last year, the construction industry increased by 5.73% due to higher construction-related expenditures by the private sector and general government.
Services Sector
The services industry showed a growth of 4.09% during FY 2025-26 with positive contributions from all constituents: wholesale and retail trade (3.71%), transport and storage (2.31%), information and communication (7.52%), public administration and social security (8.54%), education (5.23%), human health and social work (6.85%), and other private services (3.69%).
