July 11, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 29, 1423

ISLAMABAD, July 10: Although rates of petroleum products were raised nearly a dozen times for the people of Pakistan, the importers gained over $216 million from the decline in import prices of crude oil during 2001-02.

According to the import statistics of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, the country imported 713,201,7 tons crude oil at the average rate of $172.45 per ton as against $198.46 which was the average import price during 2000-01.

Incidentally, the import of crude was lower by 8.97 per cent than in the preceding year. As the prices of petroleum products were raised instead of being reduced correspondingly, the importers’ profit would have been even higher had they found it possible to keep the import at previous year’s level.

Due to lower import and drop in price, the share of crude oil bill in total import bill ($10.34 billion) stood at 11.89% in 2001-02, as compared to 12.68 per cent in the preceding year.

In spite of 16.62 per cent decrease in their import (in dollars), petroleum products had the largest portion of foreign exchange resources. Their import bill totalled $2.80 billion. Nevertheless, their share in total import bill dropped from 33.33 per cent in 2000-01 to 27.11 per cent in the year under review.

Next came the Machinery group whose import bill amounted to $2.18 billion — 5.95 per cent more than the previous year. This group accounted for 21.18 per cent of the import bill, up 19.26 per cent from previous year. In this group, textile machinery was imported for a total amount of $405.17 million.

The second highest expenditure ($326.69 million) in machinery group was incurred by import of road motor vehicles.

Apart from the textile machinery, an amount of nearly $185 million was spent on import of synthetic fibre and synthetic & artificial silk yarn—about 15 per cent more than previous year.

Thus the agricultural and other chemicals group imports ($1.86 billion) declined by 2.32 per cent. In this group, however, only the medical products show negative growth of 5.06 per cent.

The imports of metal group ($430.2 million) surged by 19.06 per cent. The main expenditure in this group was incurred by import of iron and steel scrap ($49.72 million) and iron and steel ($333.90 million).

Likewise, Miscellaneous group ($283.29 million), which includes, among other goods, crude rubber (including synthetic/reclaimed), etc., increased its imports by 6.69 per cent. In this group, the items which showed positive growth were rubber tyres & tubes, paper & paperboard, etc.

FOOD GROUP: A noteworthy trend in imports is the decline in imports of foodstuffs. The largest claim in this area is that of edible oil.

The total quantity of edible oils imported during the year under review was about 11,85,000 tons for total import bill of about $400 million. This included 115,060,7 tons of palm oil, which is 13.34 per cent more than the previous year. This raised the import bill by 32.73 per cent, thanks to increase in the import price of palm oil.

Another significant feature of imports data is the import of sugar of which over 85,000 tons were brought from overseas.