Machinery sector''s imports crossed one billion dollars mark during the first two months of the current fiscal due to huge demand of agriculture, telecom and power generation machinery, importers told Business Recorder on Saturday.
They said that huge imports of agricultural machinery had played prominent role in the growth of machinery import, as new agriculture reforms and loan availability for the agriculture had raised the demand of agriculture and its allied machinery.
While there is tremendous increase in the import of power generation machinery due to frequent load shedding in the different parts of the country, the import of office and mining machinery has declined.
Importer said that during the first two months of the current fiscal year, machinery import, including power generation equipment, data processor, construction, mining, telecom sector and agriculture machinery had increased by 10.33 percent or 107 million dollars
After this upsurge, the overall machinery import has reached 1.139 billion dollars during July-August of the current fiscal as compared to 1.03 billion dollars during the some period of last fiscal.
In addition, machinery worth about 605.887 million dollars has been imported during August as against the 522.357 million dollars worth of imports during August 2006, depicting an upsurge of 83.530 million dollars in August 2007. Machinery imports during August as compared to July depicted an increase of 14 percent, as it stood at 533.357 million dollar during July 2007.
"We are expecting further increase in the machinery import during the next few months, especially in power generation sector, as the country is still facing shortage of electricity," the importers said.
They said that import of construction and mining machinery, which showed a decline of seven percent in the August, would also go up in the future as some new international construction companies would be starting their projects during this fiscal.