The oil import bill recorded a sharp increase in the first seven months (July-January) of 2021-22 from a year ago owing to rising prices on the international market and massive depreciation of the rupee.
According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the total oil import bill surged 107.35 percent to $11.7 billion in the first seven months of the current fiscal year.
The total oil imports during the same period of the last year were recorded at $5.64 billion in the first seven months of the last fiscal year 2020-21.
The import bill was recorded at $1.514 billion during January 2022, depicting an upsurge of 74.19 percent on a year-on-year basis against $869 million in the same month last year; however, on a month-on-month basis, it went down by 15.96 percent from $1.802 billion in December 2021.
The main reason for increase in oil import bill was 74 percent increase in international benchmark Arab Light prices along with 25 percent volumetric growth on a year-on-year basis, the PBS data showed.
