Why Food Crisis Hits Pakistan

November 5, 2026

Pakistan has prioritised expenditure on military hardware in the country’s budget while reducing allocations for food and health amid rising levels of hunger and malnutrition among the people. The federal budget for 2026-27 allocated PKR 3 trillion (Pakistani rupee) to defence services, up 17.6 per cent, with the physical assets line for weapons procurement rising 39.6 per cent to PKR 925.8 billion. Health received PKR 53.3 billion in total, of which PKR 24.3 billion covered the entire health and nutrition development portfolio. Military pensions, carried separately at PKR 822 billion, exceed the full health allocation more than 15 times over. The government’s own ‘Economic Survey’ records public health expenditure at 0.8 per cent of gross domestic product. A country spending roughly PKR 56 on its army for every rupee on its citizens’ health has declared what it values. It highlights that Pakistan scored 25.5 on the 2026 Global Hunger Index, placing it 106th among 122 countries and worse than every functioning state in South Asia. Sri Lanka, which defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2022 and spent the following years under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, scored 10.2 and now records South Asia’s lowest hunger levels. Bangladesh scored 19.2 and Nepal 14.5, both moderate, and India scored 24.1. No external shock explains this deterioration in Pakistan’s hunger levels, even though neighbours facing the same climate and commodity prices have avoided it. cites trend data which shows that after 2018, undernourishment has risen from the low to the medium band, and child wasting has climbed towards the high threshold. Pakistan is reversing gains earlier governments achieved, during the same period in which a civilian administration under military direction consolidated its hold on policy. indicators describe a public health emergency Islamabad has chosen not to treat as one. Undernourishment affects 16.1 per cent of the population, child stunting among the under-fives stands at 33.6 per cent, child wasting at 9.8 per cent and under-five mortality at 5.6 per cent. Besides, Pakistan has abolished the wheat support price mechanism under reforms tied to its IMF bailout programme, then presided over procurement that collapsed to roughly 480,000 tonnes in Punjab against a three million tonnes target.