May 24, 2021 (MLN): Since Pakistan’s economy is still in the phase of recovery amid the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic activities are restoring back to normal. As a result, the demand for the group of petroleum products keeps on surging as it inflated the import bill by 97.11% YoY to $1.14billion in April’21. While on MoM basis, the import of the same group increased by 3.2%.

Consequently, petroleum crude remained the major contributor to soaring import bill by 6.5x YoY while on MoM it showed an increase of 42.45% in April’21. Likewise, the import of Natural Liquefied Gas stood at $294.73mn boosted by a 94.67% increase YoY whereas, on MoM basis, the same product witnessed a small increase of 27.19% 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 $418.12mn and $46.96mn, respectively. On YoY, petroleum products observed a 21.67% jump in FY21 corresponding to April’20 whereas 25.42% dropped in April’21 on MoM basis compared to the last month. Also, petroleum gas, liquefied witnessed a 74.23% increase in April’21 while the same product witnessed a meager increment on MoM basis.

The petroleum group contributed 19.43% of the total imports during 10MFY21 which clocked in at $7.5billion against $8.7bn of the corresponding period of FY20, showing a dip of 8.26% YoY when compared to the same period last year, data revealed by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).

On the export side, During July-April FY21, Petroleum group & coal witnessed a fall of 41.75% YoY to stand at $145.47mn against $249.75mn in the corresponding period of FY20.

Commodity-wise, the main exportable product was petroleum EXCL Top Naphtha stood at $7.77mn depicting a huge increment of $7.23mn on MoM basis. While on YoY basis, the export value of the same commodity jumped by $7.68mn compared to April’20.

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