ISLAMABAD, May 10: Machinery imports rose by 35.57 per cent to $2.266 billion during July-April 2002-03 over the corresponding period of the last fiscal year, according to foreign trade data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Statistics.

In absolute terms, the import bill of machinery group registered an increase of $594.70 million. As a result, its share in overall import bill of $10.09 billion jumped to 22.44pc as against 20.28pc in the corresponding period of previous year.

The overall import bill itself raced ahead of previous year’s by 22.49 per cent, thus nullifying the impact of over 20% rise in exports during the same period and raising the trade imbalance to $1.25 billion or by $328.90 million (35.72pc).

The largest increase—69.10pc—was recorded in the import bill of road motor vehicles ($377.10 million). Other sub-categories whose imports surged during the period under review were: Power Generating Machinery ($215.66 million) was up by 30.53pc, textile machinery ($405.45 million) by 20.65pc, aircraft, ship and boats ($61.38 million) by 52.73pc and agricultural machinery & implements ($27.64 million) by 133.48pc.

But, in terms of import bill, “Petroleum Products” were on top. The foreign exchange spent on this group amounted to $2.68 billion—up $457.68 million (20.56pc) over the previous year. Its share in overall import bill stood at 26.57pc, as against 27pc in the previous year.

In this group, import of petroleum crude cost $1.21 billion or 20.57pc more than last year. Its share in the overall import, nevertheless fell to 11.98pc down 0.19pc from previous year. The quantity of petroleum crude imported during the 10-month period under review was a little over 5.97 million tonnes, only 0.59pc more than last year’s.

The figures show significant rise in all the other groups as follows: * textile group ($183.45 million) up by 18.57pc; * agricultural and other chemicals group ($1744.81 million) up by 16.63pc; * metal group ($402.16 million) up 9.57pc; and * Miscellaneous group ($237.78 million) up by 2.75pc. FOOD GROUP: Edible oils continued as the most voracious guzzler of foreign exchange in this group.

The country imported 1,069,215 tons of edible oils during the period under review. This shows a jump of 11.18pc over the same period of the previous year.