ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: Pakistan’s import bill of petroleum products reached $2.532 billion during the first two months of the current fiscal year, which is up by over 88 per cent from last year’s figure of $1.344 billion, data of the Federal Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

Though oil price in the international market dropped in recent months, Pakistan’s import bill is steadily on the rise, showing that there would remain a pressure on balance of payments.

Analysts said that increase in the oil bill is due to more than 30 per cent depreciation of the rupee against dollar in the past few months.

Pakistan would get nothing in return from the decline in oil prices in the international market in order to ease pressure on forex reserves, they added.

Statistics showed that import of products manufactured from petroleum increased by 97.73 per cent to $1.296 billion in July-August 2008 against $655.701 million over the same month last year.

However, import bill of petroleum crude increased by 79.37 per cent to $1.236 billion during the months under review as against $689.105 million over the same months last year.

The total oil import bill for 2007-08 reached $11.3 billion as against $7 billion over the previous year. The trend shows that this year too the oil bill would be the biggest component in the total import bill. The statistics showed that the second biggest component of the import bill in value was the machinery group.

However, its imports increased by 3.48 per cent in July-August 2008 to $1.180 billion as against $1.140 billion over the same months of the last year.

Import bill of machinery was mainly pushed by an increase of 64.87 per cent in power generating machinery, office machines 18.79 per cent, construction machinery 69.58 per cent and other machinery 3.21 per cent.

However, textile machinery declined by more than 35.39 per cent during the months under review over last year. This showed that the textile tycoons have stopped up-grading their units.

In the telecom sector, the import of mobile phones decreased by 52.58 per cent and import of other apparatus decreased by 5.68 per cent during the first two months of the current fiscal year over the same months last year.

This shows that the introduction of additional tax on import of mobile phones has increased the cost, which resulted in a restriction in import of mobile phones.

Food items import was up by 13.52 per cent to $549.025 million in July-August 2008 as against $483.637 million in the corresponding months of the last year.

The import of milk products increased by 7.86 per cent, pulses 44.81 per cent, tea 44.55 per cent, palm oil 14.23 per cent and spices 13.66 per cent during the period under review. However, import of sugar declined by 54.28 per cent followed by soyabean oil 87.70 per cent and dry fruits 19.84 per cent during the period under review over last year.