Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says the government has prepared contingency and coordination plans to protect Pakistan from shortages of LNG, LPG and oil this winter. Chairing a federal cabinet meeting in Islamabad on Wednesday, he said energy needs were being reviewed every two to three days because of rising global prices and risks to shipping routes.
The prime minister announced that the decades-old monopoly in the LPG sector had been ended. Under the new system, locally produced LPG will be sold through supervised competitive auctions, and importers will also have to follow set procedures. He said auction revenue would go to the national exchequer and be used to provide relief to ordinary citizens.
Sharif said Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik, the regulator OGRA and the relevant committee had made a timely decision to make refineries share their windfall profits, which meant a proposed Rs15 per litre rise in petrol prices was not passed on to consumers. The petrol subsidy programme, which has benefited about 15 million people, will continue at least until the end of December, he said. Around Rs28 billion has been spent on it so far, reaching an estimated 75 million people including family members. He added that intelligence agencies had found irregularities at a few petrol pumps, and he had ordered them closed and heavily fined.
On security, the prime minister said the government had finalised a Rs160 billion development and security package for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan had suffered greatly from terrorism, he said, and the government was determined to eliminate it for good.