Oil Archives - Teeth Maestro Teeth Maestro

Bhagwandas Report – Oil companies given free-hand to fix Oil Prices

Many in Pakistan may have already glanced through this front page story in Dawn, I feel this is a very valuable piece of information to keep in mind when we try to understand the oil-scam in Pakistan.

In 2001 an Oil Companies Advisory Commission comprising of all oil companies in Pakistan under the watchful eye of DG (Oil) showed up only three times of the 114 meetings held from 2001-2006. The DG (Oil) was entrusted with the responsibility to manage, ensure and monitor the demand and supply of petroleum products throughout the country but due to negligence the ministry used to faithfully accept and notify whatever calculations were done by OCAC. The 74-page Bhangwandas report noted that since members of the OCAC were direct beneficiaries of oil business and, therefore, could not be expected to perform their functions in isolation of their self-interest. “It would be highly inconceivable to expect that persons having direct interest in the outcome of an exercise would be oblivious of their personal interest and act freely and independently in the larger consumer interest’
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The Carbon Tax Fiasco

Cyril Almeida a columnist in Dawn has penned an excellent article on the recent controversy regarding the petroleum carbon tax. It is a fact that in March 2009 the government had imposed a Petroleum Developmental Levy which resulted in an increase in the price of petroleum goods by a few rupees. The then, newly restored Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry took matters into his own hands and reversed this developmental levy and rightly said “the welfare state had the authority to recover tax on petroleum but not to make profit”.

Having been forced to undo a lucrative indirect petroleum taxation by the Supreme Court the government returned with a new Carbon Tax piggy-backed onto the Finance Bill of 2009 which went through unanimous approval across the parliament with practically not a single politician objecting to this steep rise in petroleum prices in the debate. Interestingly once the Carbon Tax came into effect the Supreme Court knee-jerked to issue an immediate order to stop this implementation of the carbon tax which was actually going to result in atleast a Rs. 10 hike in all petroleum goods across the board.
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