Excessive gas bills threaten the survival of industries

The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and the seven associations of industrial cities and textile exporters, while expressing deep concern over the exorbitant and retroactive gas bills, urged the Prime Minister and the petroleum and power ministers to take urgent notice of the “anti-industrial move” that is making exports dependent on exports and Pakistan.

Addressing a joint press conference at KCCI on Thursday, business leaders appealed to the government to immediately freeze the controversial levy charged retrospectively for four months, which has increased gas bills from millions to tens of millions of rupees, an unbearable burden for industrial concerns.

Businessmen Group (BMG) President Zubair Motiwala, who participated in the press conference via Zoom, recalled that during the tenure of Pervez Musharraf, industries were encouraged to set up captive power plants (CPPs) to overcome the power crisis, with a clear assurance that they will be supplied with natural gas.

However, he lamented that the recent hike in gas tariffs, coupled with heavy taxes and levies, has made captive power generation unviable, turning billions of rupees invested in these units into a complete waste.

“It seems the IMF wants to make us an import-driven economy,” he observed, and asked the government to compare Pakistan’s cost of doing business with that of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The textile industry, which includes seven stages of production, depends on energy at every level. “When the energy cost is much higher than that of Bangladesh, how can we compete? Give us the same cost of doing business, if we fail again, hold us accountable,” he stressed.

Motiwala condemned the levy of Rs 791 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on CPPs, introduced on the pretext of cost differential with grid electricity. “There is no such difference in reality,” he argued.