The people here are missing a lot. Jumping to quick conclusions and finding scapegoats. Without reasoning on the data. The import bill increased because of 2 reasons.
1) Increase in the import bill because of increased prices. This caused the majority of the hike in the import bill. Our food and petrol price bills have hiked a lot because of global inflation.
2) Increase in the number of import commodities. This is the point of
Desprado that we increased our imports and hence the import bill. However, this point is not responsible for the majority of the increase in our bill hike. Two sectors showed growth in the number of imports. One is the machinery under the CPEC projects and the other one is the increase in the number of vehicles. Now out of this whole scenario he just picked up vehicles and declared them the reason for the hike in import bill. Now that claim is not data-based. There was a hike in the vehicle import bill but it was a minor contribution to the bill. Opening car imports was also necessary to break the cartelization of the companies and to bring down the own on new cars. Own in Pakistan is a new thing that artificially inflates the prices of vehicles and a lot of capital gets parked in the terms of owns. That own amount got spent in a totally nonproductive way by the middle men.
Following are some links
Increase in demand, supply chain disruption cause escalation in costs
tribune.com.pk
* Of the food group, palm oil imports were the major constituent
www.brecorder.com
Total import bill goes up to $5.601bn, enlarging trade gap.
www.dawn.com
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s oil and food import bills have massively increased in first quarter (July to September) of current fiscal year, which is
nation.com.pk
Food import figures climb up 66.11pc; country set to import 0.6m tonnes of sugar, 4m tonnes of wheat.
www.dawn.com