June 21, 2021 (MLN): The import bill of petroleum products during the month of May’21 stood at $1.2billion, surged by 3.6x YoY while on MoM basis, the import of the same group increased by 3.54%.
Pakistan’s economy is moving back towards normalcy after having its fair share of struggles amid Covid-19 pandemic and registered a growth of 3.9% during fiscal year 2020-21. The restoration of economic activities keep pushing up the demand for the group of petroleum products and inflated the import bill.
Consequently, petroleum crude remained the major contributor to soaring import bill by 4.16x YoY while on MoM it showed a decline of 17.40% in May’21, as per data reported by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Likewise, the import of Natural Liquefied Gas stood at $276.56mn, depicting a decline of 6.16% whereas, on MoM basis, the same product witnessed a surge of 2.5x corresponding to the previous month of FY21.
In the same way, Petroleum products and petroleum gas, liquefied continued to be the significant contributors with an import bill of $565.7mn and $24.7mn, respectively.
Petroleum products observed 4x increase in May’21 corresponding to May’20 whereas, on MoM basis, the same commodity witnessed a surge of 35.31% in May’21 compared to the last month. Also, petroleum gas, liquefied witnessed a 94% increase in May’21 while, on MoM basis, the import bill of same product went down by 47%.
The petroleum group contributed 19.7% of the total imports during 11MFY21 which clocked in at $9.9billion against $9.8bn of the corresponding period of FY20, showing a slight increase on YoY basis when compared to the same period last year.
On the export side, During July-May FY21, Petroleum group & coal witnessed a fall of 40.29% YoY to stand at $149.3mn against $250mn in the corresponding period of FY20.
Commodity-wise, the main exportable product was petroleum EXCL Top Naphtha stood at $3.92mn, depicting a sharp decline of 49.5% on MoM basis. While on YoY basis, the export value of the same commodity jumped by 8.7x compared to May’20.
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