The only thing more stable than a dead corpse is a patient on a ventilator. That’s the current state of macroeconomic activity in Pakistan. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), GDP growth during the first half of FY25 clocked in at a paltry 1.54 percent — the lowest half-year growth rate in at least a decade. This comes despite a full year of chest-thumping declarations of recovery by the government and its cheerleaders.

There is much to lament in the economic snapshot shared by PBS. But here’s the headline: to achieve the consensus full-year growth forecast of 3 percent, the economy must now grow at a blistering 4.46 percent in the second half of the fiscal year. That may not sound excessive in isolation, but it is nearly three times the growth rate achieved in H1. For context, the average H2-to-H1 growth multiplier over the past decade has been just 1.35x. Only once has this multiplier breached 3x — during the V-shaped rebound of 2021 when the economy shot up from a pandemic-induced crash.

FY25, however, offers no such fairy tale. The first half has confirmed stagnation in agriculture, paralysis in industry, and a services sector that can best be described as sluggish with a caffeine allergy. Absent a divine intervention or a statistical miracle, Pakistan is headed for yet another year of anemic growth cloaked in aggressive propaganda by a team of PR specialists masquerading as economic experts.

Already, wheat crop output — the heavyweight of second-half agricultural activity — is expected to decline by as much as 10 percent. Interest rates are now forecast to remain glued around 12 percent, as the IMF has made it clear it expects the central bank to keep monetary settings sufficiently tight and cautious. Textile spinning and cloth production, which once anchored the LSM index, remain in negative territory with no signs of revival. Sugar production, another high-weighted component, is also likely to register negative growth. Put all this together and the full-year GDP may crawl to 2.25 percent — lower than the 2.5 percent reported last year, and the weakest in the past 15 years barring the two contraction years of 2020 (pandemic) and 2022 (floods).

Large Scale Manufacturing is not just struggling—it is in industrial hospice care. Seven-month cumulative growth stands at a negative 1.8 percent, making it the weakest stretch since FY21. LSM has now contracted in eight of the last ten quarters. A dozen of its twenty-two sub-sectors are producing less today than they did nearly a decade ago—back when smartphones had headphone jacks and Pakistan still had a semblance of industrial activity.

While wearing apparel (fueled by readymade garment exports) and the auto sector (riding off a low base) offered bright spots, their contributions are too narrow to move the needle. The textile sector’s sub-index has been below 100 for 28 consecutive months. If you need a visual metaphor, think of a limping giant in shackles.

Meanwhile, pharmaceuticals, POL products, white goods, and construction-related industries remain stuck in neutral — or worse, in reverse. Sure, capacity utilization may have crept up in February, but one decent data point does not make a recovery. It is more a blip than a bounce.

But the real scandal is not just economic underperformance — it is statistical overperformance. Despite LSM at a negative 1.9 percent, mining at negative 5.7 percent, construction at negative 9.3 percent, and cotton ginning at negative 10.7 percent, somehow utilities posted growth of 4.1 percent. Wholesale and retail trade contracted by 0.4 percent, yet services still posted a miraculous 2.4 percent growth. Divine intervention, or data gymnastics?

Were it not for the headline-defying growth in livestock (5.5 percent) and meat slaughtering (7.4 percent), Pakistan’s H1 growth would have been negative. Had these sectors merely grown at their decade-average pace, the entire GDP print would have dipped into the red. Instead, PBS handed out a growth number padded with hypothetical livestock miracles and slaughterhouse booms.

Then there is the fairytale growth in small-scale manufacturing (SSM), reported at 9.5 percent — the highest in over a decade. How exactly did SSM surge when both LSM and wholesale and retail are on life support? Ditto for the logistics (transportation and storage), which managed to grow despite the industrial economy standing still.

If PBS is to be believed, Pakistan could have outpaced BRICS and given the Asian Tigers a run for their money — if only those pesky major crops and LSM had not dragged us down.

In sectors where PBS lacks high-frequency data — livestock, SSM, slaughtering among several others — it leans on input-output tables and historic averages. And it shows. This time around, those inputs appear to be laced with wishful thinking and statistical caffeine. Livestock grew at 5.5 percent against its historical 3 percent. SSM grew at 9.5 percent against a historic average of 7 percent. Public administration jumped to 6.7 percent against its long-term average of 3.3 percent. At this point, the growth narrative looks less like measurement and more like fiction writing.

At the very least, PBS should open its black box of input-output tables for public scrutiny. Because while the economy may be clinging to life, public trust in economic data does not have to die with it.