According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the country's imports fell about 13 percent year-on-year in the four months ending October 2015. That?s about $2.1 billion less than 4MFY15, of which most of the decline was led by lower fuel imports as both average prices as well as the quantities dropped substantially over last year.
The other big decline is visible in the food segment; where one can't help notice the huge 40 percent increase in tea imports. However, the total food import bill was brought down by about 13 percent thanks to only a soft rise in palm oil imports (as lower prices were capitalised by palm oil importers) along with significant reduction in 'all other food items'.
Outside of food and fuel, machinery imports are usually the biggest segment. That segment saw a modest rise of 1.7 percent in imports. According to PBS data, machinery imports for power generation were up 13 percent, whereas that for electrical machineries rose 14 percent. However, imports of telecom machineries (led by a fall in telecom apparatus imports than mobile phone imports) were down 28 percent whereas that of office machineries was nearly halved over last year.
In the transport segment, imports of both completely built as well as completely knocked down units were up 27 percent and 24 percent respectively ? in tandem with the growth in auto sales numbers. Yet as imports of aircrafts, ships and boats dropped 28 percent overall transport group imports eased by 3 percent.
The slide in 4MFY16 imports would have been much steeper had there not been a significant rise in non-food-non-oil imports, where the category called 'all other items' is of much importance. The details for this category are usually unavailable but it saw the highest increase in imports in dollar terms. In the interest of transparency, hopefully the Finance Minister would encourage the PBS to share the details of what constitutes the 'all other items' given its new found importance.
0.jpg)
Comments
Comments are closed.