Pakistan ranks in the top ten producers of 15 commodities: cotton (#5, 7% of world output in 2023), dates (#5, 6.1% of world output in 2024), sesame seed (#5, 6.5% of world output in 2024), mangoes (#6, 3.5% of world output in 2024), sugar (#6, 3.6% of world output in 2023), tobacco (#6, 3.1% of world output in 2024) and more. It is a top-ten exporter of rice (#3, 10% of world export value in 2024), chromium (#4, 1.6% of world export value in 2024), sesame seed (#7, 4.1% of world export value in 2024), mangoes (#10, 2.7% of world export value in 2024).
Share of world production, 2023. Countries with no reported production are unshaded.
Almost everything Pakistan grows depends on water diverted from one river system. The Indus canal network, begun under British administration in the 1860s and greatly extended after the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 gave Pakistan the western rivers and paid for link canals and the Tarbela and Mangla dams, irrigates a contiguous area larger than any comparable system in the world. Rainfall in the Punjab and Sindh plains is too low and too concentrated to support the cropping pattern without it. The standard rotation is cotton or rice in the summer and wheat in the winter, which is why the same provinces appear in several commodity tables at once. Pakistan produced 4.0% of the world's wheat in 2024 (FAOSTAT), consumed almost entirely at home as the staple.
Rice is the export crop. Long-grain aromatic basmati, grown in the Punjab rice belt where the cool nights of late summer let the grain elongate, sells at a premium to Gulf and European buyers, while coarse varieties go in bulk to East and West Africa. Pakistan grew 1.8% of the world's rice in 2024 (FAOSTAT) but held 10% of world rice export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), a much larger share of the trade than of the crop.
Cotton shows the system under strain. The crop underpins a textile industry that is the country's largest manufacturing employer, but yields have fallen under pest pressure, heat and the flooding of 2022, so the spinning mills buy the difference abroad. Pakistan produced 7.0% of the world's cotton in 2023 (FAOSTAT) and at the same time took 11% of world cotton import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Cane grown along the canals gave 3.6% of world sugar production in 2023 (FAOSTAT), a thirsty crop in a water-short basin, protected by support prices and periodically exported at a loss.
Edible oil is the largest agricultural import. Domestic oilseed output has never been close to demand for cooking fat, and Pakistan bought 7.0% of world palm oil import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), most of it hardened into the vegetable ghee used in South Asian cooking.
Pakistan's largest commodity exports by value. Each bar's share is that commodity's share of world trade in it, not its share of Pakistan's own exports — the two are unrelated and shown so a bar near 100% marks a commodity Pakistan dominates globally rather than one it merely exports a lot of.
Unlike the chart above, this treemap sizes each commodity by its share of Pakistan's own $5.8 billion of tracked exports, not by world trade. Rice alone is 70% of it. See the full export dependency report for how Pakistan compares with other countries.
Tea: #1, 8.2% of world imports, $624.2 million (2024)
Chickpeas: #2, 12% of world imports, $303.8 million (2024)
Jute: #3, 11% of world imports, $22.5 million (2024)
Palm oil: #3, 7% of world imports, $3 billion (2024)
Cotton: #4, 11% of world imports, $1.9 billion (2024)
Ginger: #6, 4.8% of world imports, $63 million (2024)
Lentils: #9, 2.6% of world imports, $107.5 million (2024)
Silk: #9, 1.6% of world imports, $6 million (2024)
Canola: #10, 2.9% of world imports, $385.8 million (2024)
Cardamom: #10, 2.3% of world imports, $29.2 million (2024)
Sources: FAOSTAT (crops and livestock), USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (minerals), Energy Institute Statistical Review (energy) for production; CEPII BACI for trade. Ranks count only the commodities on this site.
Pakistan commodity by commodity
One page for each commodity where Pakistan is a top-five producer or exporter with at least 3% of the world total.
What the cross-commodity reports under Patterns say about Pakistan, computed from the same data as this page.
What Pakistan uses
Pakistan had about 248 million people and a food supply of 2,514 kilocalories per person a day in FAO's 2023 food balance sheets. Its eight largest supplies among the commodities tracked there:
Largest domestic supplies of tracked commodities in Pakistan, 2023
FAO reports a negative domestic supply for Pakistan's plantains (−22 thousand tonnes; production 0 tonnes, imports 0 tonnes, exports 22 thousand tonnes), meaning exports exceed production plus imports in the year. These are not counted as use and are left out of the table above.
FAOSTAT Food Balance Sheets. Per-person rank counts countries of at least 1 million people. See consumption and self-sufficiency.
Who supplies Pakistan
Single-supplier markets. Pakistan buys half or more of its imports from one country in 7 of 12 import markets of $250 million or more, among them crude oil from Saudi Arabia (56%, $5.7 billion); natural gas from Qatar (71%, $4.9 billion); palm oil from Indonesia (86%, $3.0 billion); steel from China (74%, $903 million); tea from Kenya (89%, $624 million); wheat from Russia (70%, $545 million). Import dependency.
Suppliers gaining. Russia in wheat (27% to 70%, +43 points).
Suppliers losing. Brazil in soybeans (75% to <0.1%, −75 points).
Downloads and citation
This country's rankings as JSON · PDF summary. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "What does Pakistan produce and export?", https://commodityorigins.com/countries/PAK/ (CC BY 4.0).
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