Pakistan

Pakistan: Heavy Defense Share on a Thin Fiscal Base

Economic foundation

Pakistan's economy was worth $371.6 billion in 2024, per World Bank WDI, with a population of 251.3 million recorded the same year. Output per person comes to about $1,479 on the World Bank's 2024 figures, the constraint that shapes every other line in this file.

External liquidity is the weakest element in the dataset. The World Bank records reserves of $18.4 billion for 2024. The IMF's World Economic Outlook projects general government debt at 70.1 percent of GDP for 2026. The reserves figure here comes from the World Bank rather than the IMF's financial statistics series, so it is not directly comparable to IMF-sourced reserve readings for other states.

Military posture

SIPRI's 2025 figures put military expenditure at $11.9 billion, or 2.914 percent of GDP on SIPRI's accounting. The spending share is the notable number: Pakistan devotes a higher proportion of national output to defense than its absolute total suggests, a pattern consistent with a state sustaining a large force on limited revenue.

The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities series, current to 2022, records 652,000 active personnel and a Composite Index of National Capability score of 0.0177. CINC measures a state's share of global totals across six capability components, so the 2022 score places Pakistan below two percent of measured world capability despite the size of its standing force.

The FAS Nuclear Notebook estimates 170 warheads as of 2025. As with the other series here, manpower and composite capability are three years older than the spending and nuclear estimates, and the file offers no more recent personnel count.

Governance indicators

V-Dem's v15 release scores Pakistan for 2025 at 0.302 on electoral democracy and 0.176 on liberal democracy, both zero-to-one scales. State capacity is scored at 0.261 for the same year. All three readings sit in the lower third of their ranges, with state capacity the relevant figure for any assessment of implementation and territorial control.

Energy

Our World in Data records primary energy of 3.20 exajoules in 2024 and electricity generation of 195.03 TWh in 2025. Gas production was 260.9 TWh in 2024. The oil production figure in this dataset is 54.91 TWh for 2016 — a decade out of date and not a usable reading of current output. No more recent oil figure is available here.

Data gaps

The file contains no data on arms transfers, external financing or IMF program status, conflict events, casualties, or alliance commitments. The oil series is badly out of date and the reserves figure is a year behind the spending data.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, FAS Nuclear Notebook, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).