ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) on Monday approved the hike in gas tariff while reducing the import tax on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).
The key decisions were taken at the meeting of the committee chaired by Finance Minister Asad Umar.
Minister was of the opinion that the approved increase in gas tariff has been made while keeping in view the notion of burdening the poor consumers as less as possible, henceforth, a larger increase in tariffs was placed on higher tariff slabs, he claimed.
Moreover, the economic body also decided to cut the import tax on LPG to ten per cent.
In its previous meeting on September 10, the ECC had decided to keep the gas price unchanged.
While, the Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry had informed the media after the ECC meeting that the new system of subsidy on gas price will be finalized by Prime Minister Imran Khan. The minister had assured to launch a crackdown against the 70 percent hike on the price of a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder.
The last ECC meeting also decided that the government will facilitate farmers with subsidies on purchase of urea as it has decided to import 100,000 tons of the fertilizer.
The 12-member ECC includes Law Minister Farogh Naseem, Petroleum Minister Ghulam Abbasi, Planning and Development Minister Khusro Bakhtiar and Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid. The committee also includes prime minister’s advisers Razak Dawood and Dr Ishrat Hussain.
In addition, six more ministers – communications, national food security, power, privatisation, statistics and water resources – are part of the ECC.
