ISLAMABAD: The import bill of three major items - oil, food and transport - widened by almost 22 per cent year-on-year to $22.4 billion in the first 11 months of 2017-18.

The data shows changing trends in the composition of imports, with machinery registering marginal declines while oil imports (including LNG) are surging, in large part due to price increase.

Oil imports increased 30.4pc to $12.9bn in the July-May period, with largest surge in imports of crude oil which grew by 60.35pc to reach $3.7bn. In terms of quantity, however, the increase was more modest at 28.7pc as 9.5 million tonnes of crude were imported, indicating that a large share of the growth in the oil import bill is on account of higher prices.

Imports of petroleum products went up 9.5pc to $6.8bn in the 11-month period, while the category recorded nearly 4.6pc decline in quantity to 14.4m tonnes.

LNG bill at $2.2bn; machinery down by 2.2pc

The import bill of liquefied natural gas (LNG) surged 84.6pc to $2.2bn while that of petroleum gas liquefied grew by 20.3pc to $257.9m.

Transport was the second largest to the import bill going up by 27.8pc to $3.8bn from $2.9bn, led by road motor vehicles increasing by 14.7pc to $2.6bn as against $2.2bn last year.

For a number of years now, machinery imports have been a major reason for the growing trade deficit, but the last few months they have registered negative growth. For the July-May period this year, machinery imports fell by 2.2pc to $10.6bn against $10.8bn over the corresponding period last year, buoyed up significantly by imports of telecom equipment including mobile phones, which have continued to grow by 11.7pc year-on-year, coming in at to $1.4bn.The import of textile, office and power generating machinery shrank during the period.

Food imports remained registered the lowest growth rate, though they are the second largest group of imports from this list. The food commodities posted a growth of 1.06pc to $5.7bn during the period under review.

The increase is mainly due to massive buying of palm oil, registering a 8.2pc growth to $1.88bn in value and 8.76pc in terms of quantity to 2.6m tonnes.

The second-biggest product in the food category was tea, which went up by 6.76pc to $524m. However, a 4.8pc decline was recorded in terms of quantity. The import of ‘other’ food items grew by 16.8pc to $2.2bn.

The import of milk products rose by 8pc to $251.7m while that of soybean oil surged by 11.3pc to $125.2m and spices 19.8pc to $153.5m. On the other hand, the import of pulses dropped by 46.5pc to $482.7m.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2018