Pakistan Spend Nearly $6B On Food Imports In July-January

In the first seven months, Pakistan spent nearly $6 billion on food imports, with four kitchen items accounting for more than 2/3 of the total cost.

Pakistan Spend Nearly $6B On Food Imports In July-January

In the first seven months, Pakistan spent nearly $6 billion on food imports, with four kitchen items accounting for more than 2/3 of the total cost. Due to the government’s neglect of the agriculture industry over the past few years, Pakistan has been a net importer of food.

The country occasionally experiences shortages of various goods, which results in high prices, including cotton, wheat, sugar, lentils, and sugar. Currently, imports supply more than 60% of the nation’s demand for pulses. Local consumers experience negative effects and high inflation as a result of the rise in commodity prices on the international market.

Compared to the same period last year, when imports of food totaled $5.63 billion, the total amount recorded from July through January 2022–23 was $5.98 billion, representing an increase of 6.3%.

The economy spent $4.17 billion of this total on the importation of four different products: wheat, pulses, palm oil, and tea. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data indicate that their combined imports during the same period last year totaled $3.49 billion (or 62 percent of all food imports).

The main ingredient was palm oil, whose imports rose in both volume and dollar value. Dollar-for-dollar, its imports increased by 14.8% to $2.446 billion from $2.13 billion last year. Similarly, its volumetric imports increased by 6.96 percent to 1.927 million tons from 1.8 million tons the year before.

In addition, while soybean imports cost $199.4 billion, they only came in at $65 million last year, a significant increase of 206.3 percent. Interestingly, the country imported 136870 tons of soybeans compared to 51,000 tons during the same period last year, a 168.4 percent increase in volumetric imports.

Between July and January 2022–2023, wheat imports soared by 9.7 percent in volume and 23.5 percent in dollar terms. The import of 1.939 million tons of wheat cost the economy $774.76 million during that time. It spent $627.5 million on 1.766 million tons of wheat from the global market last year during the same time period.

During the same period, Pakistan spent $363.8 million on the import of tea, a 2.6 percent increase over the $354.58 million spent the previous year. However, compared to the same period last year, the amount of tea imported fell by 4.35 percent, to 145718 tons, from 152350 million tons. Imports of pulses (leguminous vegetables) rose significantly in both volume and value.

When compared to the same period last year, its imports rose by 55.1%, to $588.5 million. In comparison to the same period last year, the economy imported 793884 tons of pulses, a 38 percent increase.