Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik has said any cut in the petroleum levy is unlikely to secure approval from the International Monetary Fund unless the government identifies an alternative revenue source to offset the loss (Geo News).
Briefing the Senate Standing Committee on Petroleum, Malik said the levy currently charged on petrol and diesel was already lower than the level imposed during wartime, adding that “perhaps the IMF may agree” if Pakistan developed another revenue option.
His remarks came as lawmakers challenged the daily fuel pricing system, calling it a burden on consumers. The minister defended it as a market-linked mechanism intended to manage global price volatility.
The exchange sets out the constraint plainly. The petroleum levy is among the more reliable lines in the federal revenue base — collected at the pump, difficult to evade, and not shared with the provinces in the way divisible-pool taxes are. That reliability is exactly why it is hard to reduce inside an IMF programme: the loss has to be replaced from somewhere, and the alternatives are the harder reforms that have repeatedly stalled.
The daily pricing mechanism, introduced on July 17, revises ex-depot prices every 24 hours on a seven-day rolling average of international prices, with no revision at weekends or on public holidays. Prices rose again in the latest revision.
Nothing in the minister’s account indicates that a levy cut is under active consideration.
