ISLAMABAD, July 28: Pakistan spent a hefty sum of $7.339 billion on import of petroleum products during 2006-07, showing an expansion of 9.96 per cent over the previous year’s figure of $6.674 billion.

Official figures released by Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) on Saturday showed that the share of petroleum products in total import bill also rose to 24 per cent during the year under review as against 23.3 per cent the previous year.

The statistic showed that the import of products manufactured from petroleum increased by 29.59 per cent to $3.773 billion in 2006-07 as against $2.880 billion a year earlier.

However, the growth in imports of petroleum crude declined by 4.94 per cent to $3.605 billion as against $3.793 billion in 2005-06.

The second biggest component of the import bill in value was the machinery group. However, its imports increased by 8.82 per cent to $6.605 billion in 2006-07 as against $6.07 billion of previous year. The import bill of machinery mainly pushed by an increase of 38.09 per cent in power generating machinery, office machines 5.04pc, construction machinery 16.85pc and agriculture machinery 34.19pc.

In the telecom sector, the import of mobile phones increased by 12.64 per cent and other apparatus 10.80 per cent during the year under review.