The Economic Coordination Committee has approved Rs75 billion in fuel relief for motorcyclists and small-car owners over three months (Express Tribune).
What you get
| Who | Relief | Monthly cap | |—|—|—| | Motorcyclists | Rs500 a week — 5 litres at Rs100/litre | 20 litres | | Cars up to 800cc | Rs1,000 every 10 days | 30 litres |
Non-commercial users only, one vehicle per person.
How it works
Through a Fuel Pass System run by the Ministry of IT and Telecom. Register by texting your CNIC, plate number, the first letter of your province and the registration date to 9771. Before filling up, text TOK to the same number for a token.
What did not change
The levy. Per litre of petrol, the charges remain:
| | | |—|—| | Petroleum levy | Rs80 | | Climate support levy | Rs5 | | Customs duty | Rs21 | | Total | Rs106 |
This is the breakdown that was missing
This newspaper wrote on 13 September that three different per-litre tax figures were circulating — Rs114, about 37 percent, and Jamaat-i-Islami’s Rs130 — and that “what nobody has published is a clean, current breakdown of a litre of petrol”. Here is one, and it should be used in preference to the others.
On today’s petrol price of Rs380.24, Rs106 is about 28 percent. That is lower than the 37 percent figure the Korangi Association gave, which covered taxes, duties and levies together; the gap is presumably sales tax and other charges not listed here. Readers should note the Rs106 is a floor, not a total.
The political arithmetic
Rs75bn over three months is stated as about 16 percent of one month’s petroleum levy collection.
So the government is returning a fraction of the levy to a subset of payers, through a registration system, while continuing to collect the levy in full from everyone.
That is a defensible choice — targeted relief reaches poorer users more efficiently than an across-the-board cut, which mostly benefits people who buy more fuel. It is also, unmistakably, a decision not to do the thing Jamaat-i-Islami is marching for on 20 September, and not to answer the question industry asked last week.
What officials said
Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik: “Regardless of scarcity of resources, the government has tried to protect the weak segments of society.”
IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja set out the SMS registration and token process.
What is not established
No start date has been announced, and no figure has been published for how many people are expected to register. It has not been stated what happens to unclaimed relief, how the system will prevent resale of tokens, or whether the scheme will be extended beyond three months.
The reporting cites a petrol price of Rs376 — the figure when the ECC met on Monday. It has since risen.
[Image: The Express Tribune]
