Petroleum prices: Multan chamber seeks quarterly review

RECORDER REPORT

MULTAN: Opposing the Economic Coordination Committee's (ECC) decision to revise fuel prices on a fortnightly basis, President of the Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) on Sunday urged the government to implement policy of quarterly review of petroleum prices.

Terming the ECC decision an inflation-oriented formula, MCCI President Mian Anis A Sheikh said that it would entirely crush the economic activity. Therefore, he said, it would be wiser on part of the government if the prices were reviewed after every three months. He said Pakistan had already lost a number of international markets and the ECC decision would render Pakistani goods more uncompetitive.

Stressing the need for revamping the new fuel price adjustment formula, he said that it was bound to hit millions of consumers hard.

He said the ECC should consult the business community before making any business-related decisions, as it was the real stakeholder.

He said that at a time, when energy-related street protests, industrial closures and resultant massive lay-offs were the order of the day, the ECC should have weighed options and methodologies to bring economic normalcy, but unfortunately it had done the other way round.

Sheikh said that the MCCI had repeatedly urged the government to announce special incentives for trade and industry to revive economic activity without any success. He said that the implementation of ECC's new fuel price fixing formula would create multiple problems for trade and industry as the business community would not be able to accurately calculate the rate of return on investment when the cost of doing business would be fluctuating every 15 days.