Motor gasoline, diesel: OICCI urges government to deregulate price
The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) has urged the government to deregulate front and back-end price of motor gasoline and diesel.
These comments were made in OICCI Energy Report 2019 prepared with the collective effort of 31 OICCI's members-leading international energy sector companies operating in Pakistan-who cumulatively contribute Rs 600 billion to the national exchequer and employ a large number of skilled and professional staff.
Presenting the report, CE/Secretary General, OICCI, M Abdul Aleem commented that "OICCI Energy Report 2019 includes a number of recommendations to streamline the oil and gas and power sectors. For the upstream oil and gas exploration sector, the report recommends that besides the estimated 30 onshore blocks that may be available for bidding, offshore blocks should also be considered and about 5-10 blocks should be offered every 3-6 months, so that there is a steady flow of new acreage to accelerate indigenous E&P activities."
According to the Energy Report, Pakistan's energy sector has witnessed significant transformation over the past five years, with the power generation capacity increasing rapidly to over 39,000MW by mid-2019, with the inclusion of two large RLNG based power plants, Thar coal project and imported coal-based power plants leading to a major shift in the energy mix.
Despite the relative fast paced increase in the generation and transmission capacity, over 60 million Pakistanis do not have access to electricity from the grid, which not only impact the economic growth of the country, but the economic exclusion has a social impact also.
On top of this, the mounting circular debt exceeding Rs 1.9 trillion and the inability of Distribution Companies (Discos) to arrest the ever increasing technical and non-technical losses, continue to burden the national exchequer by an additional amount of Rs 40-50 billion per annum.
"The Ministry of Energy is playing a pivotal role in introducing structural reforms to address Pakistan's prevalent energy issues. However, it is imperative that relevant stakeholders, such as the OICCI, are involved for these to be successful", commented Abdul Aleem adding that OICCI is aware of the government's plan to offer 18 onshore exploration blocks for bidding, approval for 5 LNG companies to set up re-gasification terminals at Port Qasim (PQA) and the initiative to develop an Integrated Energy Plan.
The nearly 200 OICCI members contribute about a third of the country's total tax collections, invested nearly $3.0 billion last year in new investments and employ about one million people with a significantly large contribution to the socio economic development of the community.