LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Saturday urged the government to reduce prices of petroleum products as they had declined in international market.
In a statement on Saturday, LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said if the Indian government could curtail prices of petroleum products by about Indian Rs 11 per litre (about 19 Pakistani rupees) in one go, Pakistani authorities should also make a cut in prices.
A cut in oil prices, he said, will not reduce government revenue as it would just be passing on what it was getting from international market.
Sheikh said that by bringing down prices of petroleum products, the government would be arresting fast escalating inflation while a cut in cost of doing business would help expedite production that had nose-dived due to an acute electricity shortage and a high cost of doing business.
The LCCI president also urged the government to cut the number of taxes on petroleum products as fuel is the engine of growth. "If fuel is heavily taxed, the entire economy will suffer and it happened in Pakistan as frequent increases in POL prices ruined industrial and economic activities," he added.
He said that only because of a high cost of doing business in Pakistan, a large number of industrial units had already shifted their operation to other countries. He said the ongoing high prices of petroleum products had also hit the agriculture sector.