Pakistan’s reliance on palm oil continues to be a heavy burden on our food import bill. Can something be done about it?
Pakistan Today (27/04/2026) - Yet again has our food imports bill risen. And yet again our food exports. In the first nine months of the current fiscal year, compared to the same period last year, the former increased by 15 percent to USD 7.09 billion, while the latter plummeted by 34 percent to USD 3.8 billion. The food trade deficit by the end of this period stood at USD 3.29 billion.
The import pressure was led by the buying of palm oil, the import value of which in the 9-months amounted to USD 3.023 billion – almost 92 percent of the total food trade deficit. This was a 17.49 percent increase over the amount for the first 3 quarters of the previous fiscal year. If we look at the volumes, they too rose, by 12.81 percent to 2.8 million tonnes. Indonesia and Malaysia remained the top suppliers of this oil, so ubiquitous in Pakistani kitchens, albeit in an altered form.
And this is not simply the story of this year. Palm oil has been a major import item, ever present in huge bold lettering on the list of incoming items. In FY25, for instance, Pakistan imported a record-breaking 3.2 million tonnes of palm oil, worth USD 3.4 billion. This made Pakistan the fourth largest importer of palm oil in the world, trailing India, China, and the EU.
Pakistan’s image has traditionally been that of an agriculture-driven country. The kisaan has been the image we have liked most to project of ourselves, and the land – sohni dharti – has been a staple in our national imagination of ourselves. And not for no reason at all. In fact, agriculture remains the lifeblood of our economy, contributing 23.5 percent to our national GDP, and employing over 37 percent of our total workforce.
So, for a country that relies on production of crops and grows so many crops, why do we import so much palm oil? The short answer is that we don’t grow much of it at home. But why is that the case? Various efforts have been made to promote the cultivation of oilseeds for decades now, but inconsistent policies and the industry’s infrastructural deficiencies in Pakistan have meant that the cultivation of palm – along with other varieties of oilseeds – has failed to take any meaningful root.