Pakistan: Shehbaz govt to retract from decision on fuel hike, says report

Days after Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif decided not to increase the fuel prices, a well placed official source now said that the government is likely to take a U-turn from this decision and increase the fuel prices to further put a burden on the citizens.

International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is continuing with its economic programme with Islamabad, is also unhappy with the previous decision by Shehbaz Sharif not to increase the fuel prices, as per well-placed official sources.

According to The News International, the sources said, the government thinks subsidising the masses with this huge multi-billion rupee package for cheap products is not a viable option.

Shehbaz Sharif on Friday had taken a populous decision by rejecting the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) recommendation of increasing the petroleum products prices and ordering to keep them unchanged in the next fortnight.

The former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail, while taking a dig at the government, said that the government might have to retract its recent decision. He slammed the Shehbaz government expressing that the government is unable to bear this enormous burden.

"The decision announced last night to continue petrol and diesel subsidies was a tough one and will have to be revisited," he wrote.

"Government was losing Rs 21 per litre on petrol and Rs 52 per litre on diesel," he added saying that at this rate the government would lose Rs 250 crore per day or Rs 3,600 crore in two weeks. He stated that this is far more than the expense of running the entire civilian federal government plus the entire BISP/Ehsaas programme, reported the newspaper.

"Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is in no mood to impose such prices plus high taxes on the people. But at the same time, we cannot let our fiscal and external financial position deteriorate further and have our development partners walkout. Tough choices need to be made," he chided at the Shehbaz's governance of the country.

Economists say that since the IMF is also not happy with the previous government for keeping the petroleum products prices unchanged and even reducing them by Rs 10 litre, the incumbent government would be forced to jack the prices up.