Trade balance figures for nine months ending March are out and much has been said about it in this paper and elsewhere. The key to watch, however, is the import numbers which stood at $4.34 billion in March. Thats the highest monthly import number since November 2007, if not highest ever, according to data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
PBS data shows that average monthly import bill between FY08-FY12 ranged between $2.8-3.8 billion, whereas that in the first eight months of current fiscal year stood at $3.6 billion. The last time monthly import numbers came this close to March-2013 numbers was in December and May 2011, when it stood at $4.26 and $4.28 billion respectively.
December 2011s anomaly was explained by higher-than-usual imports of power generation machinery that jumped by around $200 million against an average of monthly roughly $100 million. Aside from there were other electrical machinery and apparatus, textile machineries. Some items from the transport group also accounted for Decembers anomaly.
Similarly, May 2011 exception can be related to rather unusual jump in petroleum import numbers that stood at nearly $1.7 billion. But this unusual jump is largely because April 2011 had seen rather under-accounted petroleum group import number of $677 million.
The case with March 2013 exception, however, is different. While higher petroleum bill explains part of the anomaly, according to PBS data, its actually the machinery group that is to be mainly blamed for the possibly highest-ever monthly import bill.
Machinery group imports were close to a billion last month ($983mn to be exact) - the highest ever machinery import bill, according to PBS sources. Of this $698 million have been reported under the "other machinery head". Its hard to say at the moment as to what exactly was imported under this "other machinery head" in the last month of the PPP-led government. And the answer wouldn be available until 45 days from now; thats the time when the PBS will get its hands on detailed data. Until then, given the governments practices in other sectors, speculations will likely abound.
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Average monthly import bill
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Mar-13 8MFY13 FY12 FY11 FY10 FY09
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Total ($ bn) 4.34 3.6 3.7 3.4 2.9 3.0
Machinery group ($ mn) 983.6 485 469 436 447 569
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Source: Calculations based on PBS data
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