ECC approves hiking gas price by 112% for domestic consumers

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the federal cabinet has approved the summary for hiking the gas price by 112% for domestic consumers, ARY News reported on Monday.

The approval was given in the ECC session chaired by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar today.

The federal government decided to put an additional financial burden of over Rs310 billion on gas consumers. The gas price will be hiked by 112% for domestic consumers.

It was learnt that there will be 10 slabs of the gas pricing for domestic consumers. Sources told ARY News that Rs500 fixed charges were imposed on unprotected residential consumers.

Moreover, fixed charges of Rs50 were imposed on protected residential consumers.

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The gas pricing was also revised for the consumers from commercial, industrial and power sectors. The gas prices were increased up to 29% for commercial consumers and the new price was fixed at Rs1,650 per MMBtu.

The new prices for the export sector were increased up to 34% and fixed at Rs1,100 per MMBtu, a 13.9% hike for common industries and fixed at Rs1,200 per MMBtu, 32% hike for the CNG sector and fixed at Rs1,805 per MMBtu and 15% increase for cement companies and fixed at Rs1,500 per MMBtu.

The committee approved gas price revision for domestic, commercial and power sectors for six months from January to June 2023.

The Ministry of Energy (Petroleum Division) tabled a summary on Natural Gas Sale Pricing for FY 2022-23 and presented tariff proposals for all consumer categories in accordance with the Review of Estimated Revenue Requirement (RERR) for the fiscal year 2022-23, according to a press statement issued by the finance ministry.

Debt rescheduling

The cabinet committee also allowed the Ministry of Economic Affairs for signing of debt rescheduling agreement with Russia for debt suspension of the Covid-related amount of $14.53 million.

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The approval was given after the ministry presented a summary of the G-20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). This debt relief was announced in April 2020 for IDA-eligible countries to mitigate the socioeconomic impact of Covid-19.

Under this initiative debt relief was extended through the suspension of principle and interest payments. So far, 37 debt rescheduling agreements with 15 creditor countries have been signed.

BISP grant

The ECC granted Rs. 40 billion as a technical supplementary grant to Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) to meet its budgetary requirements for an increase in unconditional and conditional grants.

The Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety presented a summary of the enhancement of the BISP budget. It briefed the committee on the ongoing BISP programmes including Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) Programme “Benazir Kafaalat” covering around 9 million families, two Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes namely Benazir Taleemi Wazaif and Benazir Nashonuma.

Besides, this disbursement of cash assistance to affectees of floods as emergency relief of Rs. 25,000/- was provided per affected family to around 2.7 million families. In the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, there have been accelerated enrolments in Benazir Taleemi Wazaif and it is anticipated that additional 1 million children will be enrolled by the end of June 2023.

Also, BISP has extended CCT Benazir Nashonuma to all the districts of the country.