Oil imports show paltry growth

The oil import bill posted a paltry growth of over 1 per cent in the first half of the current fiscal year from a year ago, showed data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Monday. The data analysis suggests that all the groups, including petroleum goods, consumer durables and raw materials, witnessed a growth in imports in July-December 2024-25 over the same period last year. The overall import bill rose 6.52pc year-on-year to $27.84bn in July-December, mainly due to an increase in the arrival of raw materials, textile products, agriculture products, machinery and automobile sectors. Product-wise data showed that petroleum group imports posted a paltry growth of 1pc to $8.08bn during the July-December period, with the most significant increase coming from crude oil, up 3.03pc in value.