Petroleum ministry suggests Rs1.64 per litre hike in dealers’ margin

KARACHI: The Ministry of Petroleum has suggested Rs1.64 per litre hike in the dealers’ margin besides offering to review the margin variations twice in a month, ARY News reported on Monday.

The federal government and petroleum dealers held another round of talks regarding the margin hike.

The petroleum ministry suggested hiking the margin by Rs1.64 per litre. The ministry also offered to review margin variations after every 15 days in four phases.

On Friday, the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association (PPDA) postponed the countrywide strike of petrol pumps for two days after receiving a written assurance from the federal government.

State Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik and the PPDA delegation held talks at the PSO headquarters after the PPDA’s strike call for demanding a hike in the dealers’ margin.

The talks remained inconclusive as the petroleum dealers rejected the state minister’s offer to hike the margin by Rs2.65 per litre while the dealers were demanding Rs5 per litre hike.

After the failure of negotiations, the state minister constituted a committee to review the dealers margin. The committee will finalise the dealers margin in 48 hours.

Musadik Malik and PPDA will hold another round of talks after two days. The dealers will announce their next strategy after reviewing the recommendations of the federal government’s committee.

The current dealers’ margin is Rs6 per litre on the petroleum products, whereas, they demanded to make another hike to the margin by Rs5.

The dealers’ commission had been increased by more than 25% to Rs7 per litre in 2022, witnessing a hike in OMC’s margins from Rs3 and Rs3.68 per litre on petrol and HSD to Rs6 per litre in November 2022.