January 04, 2008	Friday	Zilhaj 24, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Jan 3: Pakistan’s oil import bill reached $3.768 billion which is up by 14.75 per cent from $3.284 billion last year, statistics division said on Thursday.

The import bill is the highest ever during the first five months of the current fiscal year.

Taking this as a benchmark, the country’s oil import bill is expected to hover around $10 billion by end June 2008, which will create serious problems in the balance of payments for economic managers of the newly elected government.

Official figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) showed that share of oil in total import bill reached 26 per cent during the period under review. As oil price in international market crossed the $100 per barrel mark, the share of oil in total imports will reach around 30 per cent in the up-coming months.

On a monthly basis, the import bill of oil has increased by over 39 per cent in November 2007 over last year. It indicates an upward trend in oil import bill which may escalate in the months ahead.

Official figures showed that the break-up of oil import bill showed that the crude oil increased by 12.63 per cent to $1.819 billion in July-November period of the current fiscal year against $1.615 billion over the corresponding period last year.

The other component of the oil import bill constituted value added products which reached $1.948 billion during the period under review as against $1.668 billion last year, indicating a growth of 16.78 per cent.

Like last year, import bill of oil would seem to be the prime mover of the trade deficit this year because of greater consumption.

The statistics showed that the second component of import bill is machinery which recorded a marginal growth of 6.12 per cent to $2.773 billion in July-Nov against $2.614 billion over the last year.

However, the depressing aspect is that the import of textile machinery declined by more than 26 per cent during the July-November period of 2006 over the last year.

It showed that textile tycoons have stopped import of machinery for modernising their units to enhance the quality of their products and reduce the cost of doing business for making it competitive with those coming from India and China in the international market.

The import bill of machinery mainly pushed by an increase of 11.56 per cent in power generating machinery, agriculture machinery 31.72pc, construction and mining 24.87pc, electrical machinery 14.30pc, other machinery 8.57pc and telecom 9.39pc.

The agriculture and other chemical group increased by 36.54 per cent to $2.323 billion during the July-Nov period of the current fiscal year against $1.701 billion over the same period of last year. Of these import of fertiliser increased by 160.83pc, plastic material 14.53pc, medicinal products 51.26pc and others 23.70 per cent. However, import of insecticide declined by 6.33 per cent during the period under review.