KARACHI: Pakistan’s imports of lithium-ion batteries from China have surged to high levels in the first half of 2025, trade data shows.
In his post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Head of Research at ‘Business Recorder’ Zuhair Abbasi shared data from the International Trade Centre (ITC) and explained that Pakistan imported 68 per cent more lithium batteries from China in just six months of 2025 than it did in the entire 2024.
Import figures further reveal that in the first six months of 2025, Pakistan imported approximately 165,000 tonnes of lithium batteries from China, a nearly 50 per cent increase from the 110,000 tonnes imported throughout the entire year of 2024, and more than double the amount imported in 2023 (42,000 tonnes).
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In his comments to The News, Abbasi said that a significant jump in lithium battery imports is mainly because “Pakistan is a relatively new entrant in the solar market, so there’s still a lot of catching up to do, especially when you see other countries with less solar potential importing much more.” However, he added, growth is set to accelerate. “The amount of solar we have imported over the past two years has been humongous. This is driven by more people looking to go off-grid due to high electricity prices, which will definitely increase the demand for storage solutions.”
Data shows that this influx is also a direct result of a steep decline in prices. The average import price fell from around $32/kg in November 2023 to just above $11/kg in June 2025.
Shankar Talreja, director research at brokerage firm Topline Securities, added that “over the past two years, solar penetration has been overwhelming, largely due to rising grid electricity rates. As a result, people have increasingly invested in batteries to optimise their solar power use.”
Pakistan already imports around $2 billion worth of solar [panels] annually, he said.
How is this phenomenon going to affect the country’s power sector? Macroeconomist Ammar Habib Khan explained: “As batteries get cheaper, they will accompany the already high prevalence of solar installation in the country, which would mean even lower utilisation of electricity from the grid.”
‘AFP’ reported in July that solar power made up less than 2.0 per cent of the energy mix in 2020 and reached 10.3 per cent in 2024, according to the global energy think tank Ember. But in a remarkable acceleration, it added, it more than doubled to 24 per cent in the first five months of 2025, becoming the largest source of energy production for the first time.
Ammar continued: “As that happens, and consumers defect from the grid, it can lead to a death spiral for the grid as it would not be able to generate necessary funds required to sustain itself resulting in a major financial crisis.”
Pakistan’s uncoordinated rooftop solar adoption has surprised many analysts. Speaking on the Energy Capital podcast hosted by Doug Lewin last week, environmentalist and author Bill McKibben said Pakistanis installed rooftop solar at an unprecedented pace in 2024. This, he added, became more apparent when energy analysts noticed a perplexing trend — demand for electricity on Pakistan’s national grid was falling.
Analysts examining Google Earth saw rooftops in cities like Lahore and Karachi rapidly being covered in solar panels. “You could watch solar panels spreading like mushrooms after a rainstorm,” McKibben said. “The growth was week to week.”
On what lies ahead for Pakistan in terms of solar adoption, Abbasi said that “it is safe to say we are just scratching the surface, and the market is going to accelerate significantly from here on.”
But Talreja added, “now that the government has imposed a sales tax on solar imports, the actual impact of this policy is yet to be seen.
