Import payments of capital machinery jumped by 42 per cent in the first eight months of the current fiscal year.
Commodity-wise import statistics recorded by the custom authority and released by the central bank unveiled the figure.
It showed that country paid US$3.67 billion for importing the capital machinery in July-February period of the current fiscal year.
The value was $2.58 billion in the first eight months of FY17.
The data of the settlement of letter of credit (LC), however, showed that import of capital machinery increased by more than 4.0 per cent to $ 3.99 billion in the first nine months of the current fiscal year.
The value was $3.83 billion during the same period of the previous fiscal year.
LC settlement data is generally considered as actual data although customs data usually vary with this data.