For the fourth time in the last month-and-a-half the government has increased the price of petrol and diesel, bringing further misery to a public already struggling to make ends meet. The latest government notification brought a rise of Rs1.71 per litre of petrol and Rs1.52 per litre of high speed diesel, with the hike taking immediate effect. The government then had the gall to claim it was actually providing relief to the consumer by not increasing the price of diesel as much as it should have keeping in mind the international price of oil. It pulled off this trick by asking Ogra to calculate a GST rate of 31 percent instead of the prevailing 29 percent; this amounted to an increase of Rs2.18 per litre in the price of diesel. The government then levied an increase of Rs1.52 instead of Rs2.18 and acted as if it had done us all a favour. It is true that international oil prices have more than doubled in the last year due to a cut in production by Opec but in the years before that oil prices were at record lows and yet decreases in the price of petrol and diesel in Pakistan were negligible.
Part of the reason Pakistan is so keen to increase energy prices at every opportunity is that it has been told to remove subsidies by the IMF. This obviously ends up hitting the poor the hardest since it makes it difficult for them to light their homes and cook food. An increase in the cost of petrol and diesel causes inflation throughout the economy as rising transport costs make it more expensive to move food and other goods around the country. This inflation only increases the suffering of the public. Already, just a day after this latest notification, transport prices have been hiked by Rs10 per passenger and private transporters are threatening a strike. There have also been increases in the prices of fruits and vegetables. What is even worse is that the government seems intent to keep increasing energy prices every fortnight. IMF dictates that we balance our budget on the backs of the poor should not be heeded. The message is that the government is not interested in improving tax collection and bringing the wealthy into the tax net, preferring instead to keep heaping more misery on those who can least afford it.