ISLAMABAD, Nov 24: The country's import bill of petroleum crude has declined by 13.03 per cent during the month of October, 2006 to $293.551 million as against $337.549 million over the same month of last year.

Official figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) here on Friday indicated that the decline in import of crude oil would help in reducing the trade gap over the last year. However, the import of petroleum products witnessed a growth of 36.64 per cent to $556.374 million during October 2006 as against $192.353 million over the same month of last year.

Last year, the import bill of oil was the prime mover of the trade deficit but due to decrease in oil prices in international market this year, it was expected that the overall import bill would further decline in the months ahead.

With this decrease in oil imports, the total import bill has declined by 8.33 per cent during October 2006 to $2.131 billion as against $2.325 billion during the same month of the last year.

In the telecom sector, the import of mobile phones decreased by 6.37 per cent to $62.529 million in October 2006 as against $66.783 million the same month last year. However, the import of other apparatus of telecommunications increased by 37.40 per cent to $129.629 million as against $94.343 million the same month last year.

The second biggest component of the import bill in value was machinery group. However, it increased by 3.88 per cent during October 2006 over last year’s month due to import of electrical machinery, which rose by 8.19 per cent, power generating machinery 6.17 per cent, official machine 10.50 per cent, agriculture machinery 7.39 per cent and other machinery 3.60 per cent.However, import of textile machinery and construction machinery declined by 36.71 per cent and 24.15 per cent, respectively, during the month of October over the same month of last year.

Food items import declined by 11.01 per cent to $239.356 million during October as against $268.962 million in the corresponding month last year. The import of milk products declined by 2.65 per cent, wheat 13.8 per cent, dry fruits by 42.32 per cent and sugar by 48.6 per cent.