Petrol price slashed by Rs1.86 per litre

ISLAMABAD:

Prime Minister of Pakistan has given approval for the reduction in prices of the petroleum products with Rs1.86 per litre slash in the petrol price for the next fortnight.

According to a notification issued by the Ministry for Finance, the price of per litre petrol stood at Rs259.10 with a decline of Rs1.86 per litre. In addition, the per litre price of high speed diesel was slashed by Rs3.32 per litre to Rs262.75.

The new prices of petroleum products will be applicable from September 1 for the next 15 days. The government revises prices of petroleum products after 15 days in line with the international market trend.

Meanwhile, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) has raised the prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) by Rs6.99 per kilo gram to Rs243.99 for the month of September.

As per OGRA notification, a domestic cylinder of 11.8 kilogram will be sold at Rs2,879.10 to consumers that includes Rs74.73 as GST.

The oil and gas regulator said the LPG producer price is linked with Saudi Aramco-CP and the dollar ex-change rate.

It added that compared to previous month Saudi Aramco-CP increased by 3.63 percent and the aver-age dollar exchange rate slightly increased by 0.046 percent thus the LPG consumer price hiked by Rs82.54 per 11.8 kg cylinder.

The stake holders expressed concerns over the LPG price hike, saying it will be a serious financial bur-den on the consumers amid change of weather conditions from October.

"The most serious issue is that there was no official planning to counter the severe gas load shedding set to start from the last week of September," said Irfan Khokhar, president LPG Distributor Association of Pakistan.

He was referring to the expected shortage of LPG in winter months as the local LPG production was around 2,000 tonnes and the imports were exceeding around 4,000 tonnes, mainly from Iran.