# Trade by product and country

Every product Pakistan exported or imported, with every partner country, for each fiscal year from 1990-91 to 2024-25. The source is the **Pakistan Bureau of Statistics**' customs record: one line per product code, partner and year, with quantity and value.

| | |
|---|---|
| Coverage | More than 15,000 product codes x 278 partners, FY1990-91 to FY2024-25 |
| Frequency | Yearly (fiscal year, July to June; `fy` = the year it ends, so `2025` = FY2024-25) |
| Values | Rs thousand as published, and US$ thousand at the fiscal year's average SBP exchange rate |
| Flows | `export`, `import`; to FY2020-21 also `re-export`, `re-import` |
| Endpoints | [`/v1/trade/*`](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/api-trade.md) |
| On the site | The [trade explorer](https://pakdatahub.com/trade), a page per [product](https://pakdatahub.com/trade/products) and per [partner](https://pakdatahub.com/trade/partners) |

## Product codes

- **From FY2002-03:** 8-digit Pakistan Customs Tariff codes, built on the Harmonized System. The first four digits are the HS heading (`1006` rice), the first six the HS subheading, the last two Pakistan's own split (`10063010` basmati rice).
- **Before that:** 7-digit codes built on SITC, a different classification. A product's history usually continues under a new code in 2002-03, so a 2001-02 code and a 2002-03 code are not comparable one to one.
- **Names.** PBS prints a 30-character abbreviation per code ("LEATH BUFFAL HIDES,TANN,FINISH"). Each code also has a readable `name`: the official HS or SITC text where the code is itself the official item, otherwise PBS's wording with the abbreviations spelled out. The official parent heading is in `hs_heading` and PBS's text stays in `description`.
- **Codes change.** HS revisions (2007, 2012, 2017, 2022) split, merge and renumber codes, so a code can start or stop mid-series. HS headings move far less, which makes them the better unit for long histories.

## Product pages

Every HS heading has a page that adds up its 8-digit codes, for example [rice](https://pakdatahub.com/trade/products/1006-rice), and so does every product code, for example [basmati rice](https://pakdatahub.com/trade/products/10063010-rice-basmati). Each page has yearly exports and imports, the partner countries for any year, quantities and unit values for a single code, and the other codes in the heading. The same data comes in one call from [`/v1/trade/product/{code}`](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/api-trade.md).

Pages are listed in search engines and the sitemap when there is enough trade to say something:

- a heading with at least **US$1 million** of trade a year, on average over the last three fiscal years;
- a product code with at least **US$10 million** a year that has a clean name and is under 90% of its heading (otherwise its page repeats the heading's figures);
- a partner with at least **US$10 million** of trade over all the years.

Every other heading, code and partner still has its page; those pages ask search engines not to index them. The list of indexed pages is public: [`/v1/trade/pages`](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/api-trade.md).

## Partners

Country names are standardised across the 35 years ("U S A" and "U.S.America" are both `United States`). Places that genuinely changed keep their own names: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, and the individual UAE emirates, which PBS listed separately until 2013. A few early lines are regional ("Asia (not specified)"). Each partner has a page, for example [China](https://pakdatahub.com/trade/partners/china), with its rank among Pakistan's export markets and suppliers and its top products each year.

## Things to know

- **Totals.** Each code has a total line, `country` = `All countries`; the grand total across products is code `TOTAL`. A heading's total is the sum of its codes' total lines.
- **Quantities** are in each code's own unit (`KG`, `MT`, `NO`, `DOZ`, `SQM`, ...), so they add up only within a code; heading pages show values only.
- **US dollars** are converted by PakDataHub at the fiscal year's average of SBP's monthly average PKR/USD rate. PBS publishes rupees.
- **Customs records, not the balance of payments.** These are goods crossing the border as recorded by customs. SBP's balance-of-payments exports and imports (in the [external module](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/data-external.md)) count differently and do not match line by line.

## Examples

```bash
# Rice (HS 1006): yearly exports and imports, its buyers and suppliers, its codes
curl -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_xxx" "https://api.pakdatahub.com/v1/trade/product/1006"

# Pakistan and China: yearly totals, China's rank, top products both ways in FY2023-24
curl -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_xxx" "https://api.pakdatahub.com/v1/trade/partner/china?fy=2024"

# Basmati exports to every country, every year
curl -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_xxx" "https://api.pakdatahub.com/v1/trade/hs?flow=export&code=10063010"
```

Find codes by name with the public [`/v1/trade/products?q=`](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/api-trade.md) (`q=basmati`, `q=cotton yarn`, `q=5205`) or [search](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/api-search.md) with `kinds=trade_product`.

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Source: https://pakdatahub.com/docs/data-trade - PakDataHub docs index: https://pakdatahub.com/docs/llms.txt