The country’s import bill of petroleum products reached an all-time high of $1.7 billion in June 2022, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday.
The import of petroleum products was 73 percent higher compared to May 2022, when the import bill of petroleum products stood at $0.98 billion.
The country’s total petroleum imports for the month of June also surged by a massive 136 percent year-on-year (YoY) to $2.9 billion from $1.38 billion reported in the same period of the previous fiscal year. On a month-on-month basis, the total petroleum imports were 109 percent higher compared to $1.2 billion in June 2021.
The record high imports in June pushed the country’s total petroleum imports for the fiscal year 2021-22 (FY22) to $18.74 billion, 92 percent higher than the imports of $9.75 billion in FY21.
It is pertinent to mention here that there is a huge discrepancy in the import bill data of the central bank and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
According to PBS data, Pakistan’s petroleum group imports witnessed a growth of 105.31 percent as they reached $23.318 billion in FY22 compared to $11.357 billion during the same period of last year.
The difference is due to the separate nature of statistics used by the two organizations.
