March 23, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 14, 1429

ISLAMABAD, March 22: The country’s oil import bill soared by 33.68 per cent during the first eight months of the current fiscal year causing fast depletion in the foreign exchange reserves.

In absolute term, the oil import bill reached $6.338 billion in July-Feb period of the current fiscal year from $4.741 billion over the same period last year, according to statistics of Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) released on Saturday.

The finance ministry anticipates that the oil bill would be around $11 billion by end June 2008 on the back of record increase in oil price in international market, which is hovering around $110 per barrel. Last year, oil import bill had crossed $7 billion.

According to the State Bank data the foreign exchange reserves have declined by $2.64 billion in the last five months to $13.84 billion on March 15, from $16.48 billion at the beginning of November 2007, which was the highest level of reserves in the country’s history.

The statistics showed that the import bill of both crude oil and value-added products witnessed record increase in the period under review.

An increase of 43.55 per cent was recorded in the import bill of petroleum products as it stood at $3.416 billion during the first eight months against $2.379 billion over the same period last year.

The crude petroleum import up by 23.74 per cent to $2.92 billion during July-Feb ‘08 against $2.361 billion over the same period last year. However, in the first seven months, the crude oil import bill had recorded a negative growth of 3 per cent.

The more than 218 per cent increase in import bill of crude oil in the month of Feb, 2008 pushed up the over all import bill for the eight months of the current fiscal year.

The statistics showed that machinery was the second group after petroleum, whose import stood at $4.459 billion in July-Feb this year, up by 4.38 per cent from $4.272 billion last year.

The import bill of agriculture and other chemicals was up by 31.37 per cent to $3.650 billion during the period under review against $2.779 billion last year. While the food products bill reached $2.509 billion so far this year against $1.924 billion over last year.

The total import bill was up by 21.94 per cent in the first eight months to $24.140bn from $19.796bn over last year.