ISLAMABAD, Feb 12: Pakistan's import bill registered a massive growth of 49.31 per cent during seven months (July-January) of the current financial year, over the same period last year.

Official figures made available to Dawn here on Saturday showed that the import bill rose to $11.85 billion during the July-Jan period of the current fiscal year, as against $7.936 billion during the same period last year.

On monthly basis, the import bill rose by 60 per cent to $2.152 billion in January 2005, as against $1.345 billion in the same month last year.

The statistics showed that the massive increase in import bill was largely due to an influx in imports of agriculture and chemical groups, textile and petroleum groups and machinery groups.

The government had fixed the import target of $16.7 billion for the fiscal year 2004-05. With this increase in seven months, the import bill might surpass the target set for the current fiscal year by over $3 billion.

An analysis of the trade figures in the first half-year showed that the value of total raw materials stood at 56 per cent of the total imports. Of these, 49 per cent raw materials were imported for consumer goods and seven per cent for industrial goods. Nine per cent constituted finished products and 35 per cent only machinery.

Officials said that according to a government decision, the Federal Bureau of Statistics would only issue those trade figures which were released by the Central Board of Revenue after confirming them from different sources.

The decision was taken following a controversy in the compilation of trade figures during the month of December 2004 because the import figures reported by the CBR and the FBS were at variance.

Later on, at the direction of the prime minister, the FBS had revised upward the import figures according to the actual figures compiled by the CBR collected from all customs collectorates and customs stations across the country.