Pakistan wants to export more rice, textiles, sugar, meat, fruit and agricultural products to the Gulf and beyond. The logic appears compelling. Pakistan needs dollars, agriculture supports millions of livelihoods, the Gulf needs food security, and geography gives us an obvious advantage.

But there is a question almost entirely missing from this conversation: how much water are we exporting with every dollar we earn?

A kilogram of rice leaving Karachi is not simply a kilogram of rice. Embedded in it are land, fertiliser, electricity, labour, logistics – and water. Cotton carries water with it too. So do sugar, meat and fruit.

Economists call this “virtual water”: the water consumed in producing a commodity that is subsequently traded. For a water-abundant country, this may be an interesting economic calculation. For Pakistan, it should be a national balance-sheet issue.

Pakistan is already water-scarce. Official estimates cited in the Economic Survey and by the Ministry of Water Resources place annual water availability below 1,000 cubic metres per person, with a 2025 estimate of around 899 cubic metres, compared with roughly 5,260 cubic metres in 1951.

Imagine if Pakistan’s export dashboard contained two additional columns beside export value: water consumed, and export dollars earned per cubic metre of water.

Imagine if Pakistan’s export dashboard contained two additional columns beside export value: water consumed, and export dollars earned per cubic metre of water.

The structure of water use makes the problem even more important. FAO AQUASTAT data reported by the World Bank show that agriculture accounts for about 94 percent of Pakistan’s freshwater withdrawals. Globally, agriculture accounts for roughly 70 percent or more. Pakistan is therefore unusually exposed to how efficiently its farms convert water into economic value.

Yet our agricultural economics contains a fundamental distortion. We know the market price of wheat, the export price of rice and the contribution of cotton to textiles. We calculate fertiliser subsidies, electricity tariffs, support prices, freight and export proceeds. But the most critical input is often treated as though its economic value were close to zero: water.

That creates a strange outcome. A........

© Daily Times