March 16, 2022 (MLN): The import bill of oil was recorded at $1.24 billion during February 2022, depicting an upsurge of 54.73% YoY but down by 17.75% MoM, touching a historic high of $12.94bn, up by 2x YoY during the July-Feb FY22 amid 67% YoY jump in Arab Light prices along with 14% YoY volumetric growth, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the import of medicinal products went up by a whopping 2.4x YoY to $249mn during the month of February 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 16.37% MoM.
The PBS data showed that the medicinal import bill rose to a huge $3.64bn during 8MFY22, up by 5x YoY from $719mn a year ago.
The country’s food import bill widened by over 20.24% YoY to $6.42bn in the first eight months of the current fiscal year from $5.33bn over the corresponding months of last year to bridge the gap in food production. During the month of February 2022 alone, the food import bill increased by 13.13% YoY while, on MoM basis, it has dropped by 4% MoM to $797.44mn.
It is worth mentioning that Pakistan paid over $2.43bn on the import of Palm oil during 8MFY22, showing an increase of 54% YoY due to rising in palm oil prices in the international market.
Moreover, Pakistan imported 2,094,545 tonnes of wheat in the eight months of the current fiscal year against 3,382,942 tonnes imported last year, showing a decline of 38% YoY. In value terms, the government paid $752mn for wheat import as compared to $916mn in the same period last year.
The mobile phone import jumped by 7.63% YoY to $1.41bn in July-Feb FY22 from the same period a year ago. However, in the month of February 2021, the import bill of machinery shrank by 21.44% MoM and 19.6% YoY to $141.20mn.
The import bill of the transport sector posted a growth of 73.43% YoY to $2.94bn during 8MFY22 against $1.69bn over last year, mainly led by massive imports of road motor vehicles (build unit, CKD/SKD) worth $2.45bn. In the same period last year, the country imported $1.32bn worth of road motor vehicles.
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