Oil imports hit record high at $11.96bn in 7MFY22

February 16, 2022 (MLN): The import bill of oil was recorded at $1.5 billion during January 2022, depicting an upsurge of 74.19% YoY but down by 15.96% MoM, touching a historic high of $11.96bn, up by 2x YoY during the July-Jan FY22 amid 74% YoY jump in Arab Light prices along with 25% YoY volumetric growth, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the import of medicinal products went up by a whopping 4x YoY to $299mn during the month of January 2022, mainly due to an increase in Covid-19 vaccine imports. However, on a sequential basis, the import bill of the same commodity plummeted by 69.3% MoM.

The PBS data showed that the medicinal import bill rose to a huge $3.39bn during 7MFY22, up by 5.5x YoY from $614mn a year ago.

The country’s food import bill widened by over 21.32% YoY to $5.62bn in the first seven months of the current fiscal year from $4.63bn over the corresponding months of last year to bridge the gap in food production. During the month of January 2022 alone, the food import bill increased by 13.05% YoY and 6% MoM to $830.8mn. It is worth mentioning that Pakistan paid over $2.13bn on the import of Palm oil during 7MFY22, showing an increase of 55% YoY due to rising in palm oil prices in the international market.

Moreover, Pakistan imported 1,766,762 tonnes of wheat in the seven months of the current fiscal year against 2,964,243 tonnes imported last year, showing a decline of 21% YoY. In value terms, the government paid $627.47mn for wheat import as compared to $794.59mn in the same period last year.

The mobile phone import jumped by 11.86% YoY to $1.27bn in July-Jan FY22 from the same period a year ago. However, in the month of January 2021, the import bill of machinery shrank by 20.38% MoM and 2.46% YoY to $897.6mn.

The import bill of the transport sector posted a growth of 87.66% YoY to $2.64bn during 7MFY22 against $1.4bn over last year, mainly led by massive imports of road motor vehicles (build unit, CKD/SKD) worth $2.18bn. In the same period last year, the country imported $1bn worth of road motor vehicles.

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