Regulatory bodies’ ‘authority, autonomy’ unaffected: minister

Khaqan says deregulation of CNG sector will bring prices down

Islamabad

Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Wednesday said that bringing regulatory bodies under their respective ministries will bring no change in “authority, autonomy and functioning” of these bodies’.

While defending the government’s latest decision of deregulating the CNG sector, Minister said that it will help the consumers and bring down CNG prices. He further said, “Under the earlier arrangement and Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra)’s defined profit margin [allowed to CNG sector], doing business in this sector was impossible, so we opened it to market forces.”

Whereas, at the same time he said, “The government is going to regulate the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).” This is a difficult decision, but due to peculiar circumstances in LPG sector, the government is going to take this decision, he added.

Minister said this during the launching ceremony of 260 scholarships programme by the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) with the collaboration of Higher Education Commission (HEC) here. Under this programme, OGDCL will provide half of the scholarships to the eight public sector engineering universities, whereas remaining to Quaid-e-Azam University and International Islamic University Islamabad in other disciplines during 2016/17.

This programme is for studious and under privileged students and the HEC will be implementing this programme. Besides, the OGDCL will fund vocational training program at Hunar Foundation for 69 students of District Hyderabad, Sanghar, Ghotki & Tando Allahyar to provide vocational training of International standards at Vocational Institute located in Tando Allah Yar.

OGDCL will provide fund of Rs141 million for this program with HEC and Hunar Foundation. For this purpose, two MoUs were been signed, one by ODGCL with HEC and another with Hunar Foundation in presence of Minister for petroleum and vice chancellors of various universities.

Chairman Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad said this initiative is food for thought for all of us; this is a real investment to take the country to the rank of developed nations. This is the investment not for today but for the future generation too. He further said that the commission has so far offered 200,000 scholarships to the students in various disciplines.

OGDCL’s Managing Director Zahid Mir said, “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the integral part of our policy, last year [2015/16] we have spent Rs1.8 billion on CSR activities and this year it will be Rs1.2 billion. Our board is taking the CRS activities seriously and have inducted around 600 students (75 students from each province) in IBA Sukkar from the areas where the OGDCL is doing exploration and production activities.

 OGDCL has been allocating every year one percent of company’s pre-tax profit for CSR activities. Moreover for further strengthening the financial resources of CSR a trust fund with initial amount of Rs722 million has been established to avoid the risk of lapse of budget.