Rice slump drags down FY25 food shipments

Pakistan’s raw food exports fell by nearly 4 per cent to $7.116 billion in FY25 from $7.369bn a year earlier, largely due to a sharp drop in rice exports. The decline in raw food exports marks the end of a 20-month streak of uninterrupted growth, despite persistently high food inflation. According to data compiled by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the export of traditional value-added products saw only marginal growth during the fiscal year. Rice exports fell by 14.72pc year-on-year to $3.353bn from $3.931bn. While the volume of basmati rice exports increased by 4.48pc to 808,643 tonnes, its value dropped by 5.3pc to $830.57 million. Non-basmati rice exports decreased by 17.42pc in value to $2.522bn, with a 4.65pc decline in quantity to 5.009m tonnes.