Miftah Ismail defends hike in petrol price

ISLAMABAD, August 16: Finance Minister Miftah Ismail defended on Tuesday the federal government’s decision to hike the price of petrol after backlash from his party’s supremo Nawaz Sharif and a strong coalition partner – PPP.
The government jacked up Monday night the price of petrol by Rs6.72 per litre for the next fortnight, taking it to 233.91 per litre, while the rate of diesel was also moved up to 244.44 per litre.
In his press conference today, the finance minister clarified that he had not stated that he would not be increasing the price of petroleum products. Addressing a press conference, the minister said that Islamabad had received Letter of Intent (LoI) from the fund requiring some edits by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and Finance Ministry, which were done after holding meetings with IMF.
The minister said new LoI has been received today (Tuesday) which he would send back after signing adding “We expect the board meeting would be held in August, hopefully 29 August then the disbursement would start.”
The minister said that rupee has been performing as best currency of the world following continuous appreciation against dollar for first 15 days of August. Earlier, US Dollar had gone out of control after July 17 and reached to Rs239 exchange rate.
He said, at that time when rupee was depreciating in July he had argued that there was need to control imports and bring it to the level of exports plus remittances to strike balance.
The minister said that the imports were recorded at $.80 billion during the fiscal year 2021-22 whereas the exports stood $ 31.7 billion, bringing trade deficit to $48.3 billion. During the year, the remittances were recorded at $30 billion. Consequently, the current account deficit (CAD), he said, was recorded at $17.5 last year despite the fact had PTI was specially focusing to bring it down. SABAH