The government has cut the price of petrol by Re0.94 to Rs324.98 a litre and raised high-speed diesel by Re0.54 to Rs382.79, effective August 13 (Geo News).
The two products have now moved in opposite directions on three of the past six revisions, a consequence of pricing each off its own international benchmark under the daily mechanism, which sets ex-depot rates against a seven-day rolling average.
Petrol has fallen Rs8.03 from Rs333.01 on August 6, when it rose sharply, and now sits below where it started the month. Diesel has gone the other way over the same period, from Rs383.86 to Rs382.79 — but with two increases in the past three days after a run of cuts, and with the petroleum levy on it raised twice last week, by Rs1.44 and Rs1.21, to Rs73.47 a litre.
Diesel is the rate that matters most for headline inflation, pricing freight, farm machinery and inter-city transport, and it is the rate at the centre of the goods transporters’ dispute. Their wheel-jam strike, now in its sixth day, is directed less at the level of the price than at the daily revision itself, which they say makes freight impossible to quote. Sources said the government agreed in principle during talks not to raise petroleum prices for one to two weeks — a commitment that has not been formally notified, and which Thursday’s diesel increase does not obviously honour.
On the market, the KSE-100 index rose during the session on value-hunting but gave the gains back, closing down 206.60 points, or 0.11 per cent, at 180,104.61 — a third consecutive decline, though the index held above 180,000.
Crude softened over the same period. Brent slipped to $88.56 as OPEC and the International Energy Agency both cut demand forecasts, easing the pressure on an economy that imports around 90 per cent of its energy — though the same demand contraction those forecasts describe is not, in itself, good news for Pakistani exporters.
