Pakistan’s oil import bill posted a marginal growth of 1% year-on-year during the first half of the current fiscal year (July-December 2024-25), reaching $8.08 billion, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Within the petroleum group, crude oil imports rose 3.03% in value and 16.15% in quantity, totaling 4.98 million tonnes compared to 4.29 million tonnes in the same period last year.
Conversely, the import cost of petroleum products dropped 7%, despite an 8.38% increase in quantity, reaching 5.24 million tonnes. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports edged up by 1.95%, while liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports surged by 54.15%.
Overall imports increased by 6.52% to $27.84 billion during the period, driven by rising imports of raw materials, machinery, and agriculture products.
Machinery imports saw a 15.69% growth, climbing to $4.17 billion from $3.61 billion a year earlier. This increase was led by textile machinery (up 53.90%), electrical machinery and apparatus (up 31.27%), and construction machinery (up 53.06%).
However, the telecommunication group saw a slight decline of 1.33%, primarily due to a 7.46% drop in mobile phone imports, attributed to higher tax rates.
The transport sector showed a positive growth of 15.81%, driven by an increase in imports of Completely Knocked Down (CKD)/Semi-Knocked Down (SKD) and Completely Built-Up (CBU) vehicles.
In the agriculture sector, fertiliser imports rose sharply by 39.83%, while medicinal product imports increased by 16.75%, and plastic materials by 6.51%. However, the import of insecticides declined by 29.95% during the same period.
Metal imports recorded a 5.14% growth, primarily due to a rise in iron and steel scrap imports. These trends highlight the diverse contributions of various sectors to Pakistan’s overall import growth during the first half of FY25.
