Detailed trade numbers are finally in, and they paint quite a rosy picture. According to data released by Federal Bureau Statistics, June saw a trade gap of $1.4 billion down 12.7 percent over that in May.
But, at the risk of being clichéd, the devil lies in the details. FBS data show that Pakistan didn import even a single drop of crude oil in June, which means that imports of petroleum products soared sharply in June.
This also means knowing that refineries tend to carry one month of inventory at the most, that refineries were silent in July.
Nay! Not quite likely, considering that never in the last 24 months have crude oil imports been zero, with average crude oil imports hovering around 570,000 tons in the first eleven months of the last fiscal year.
Upon noticing this anomaly, BR Research spoke to a few industry professionals, only to find out that FBS data is misleading.
Industry sources say that refineries imported around 525,000 MT of crude oil in June, which means that import numbers have been understated by some $290 million, assuming an average crude oil price of $75 per barrel.
In other words, the trade gap for June wasn $1.4 billion, but $1.69 billion - its highest since June 2009. In turn, it also means that trade deficit for the fiscal year ending June 2010, is $15.617 billion and not $15.327 - a fall of 8.85 percent over last year; not 10.54 percent.
So while at one end, this shows that Pakistans trade performance isn exactly as sanguine as projected by official figures, it also shows a lack of professionalism at the governments statistics department.
Clearly, tabulation or data input errors may be understandable, but its unfathomable how somebody could have missed an anomaly of this magnitude. One may say that to err is human, but such errors always demand immediate attention.
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