The Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) has issued a report detailing its assessment of the recently-concluded general election, expressing deep concerns over a decline in fairness scores compared to previous election cycles.
ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet on Monday increased natural gas prices in the range of 16 per cent to 112.32pc with retrospective effect from January, 1st for six months in a bid to raise an additional Rs310 billion from the majority of domestic and all other categories of consumers to secure early disbursement of $1.2 billion tranche.
The ECC meeting chaired by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar also introduced the concept of protected consumers for a period of four months —November to February — whose average per month consumption will be below 0.9 hm3 (90 units). Four slabs for protected and six slabs for non-protected consumers were also introduced.
The minimum slab for residential consumers before the increase was 50 units per month (0.5 hm3), which under the new price mechanism was reduced to 25 units. This means consumers with low consumption would be hit under the new price mechanism to collect maximum revenue from the bulk of domestic users.
A fixed rate of Rs50 per month from protected consumers and Rs500 from non-protected consumers will be collected in addition to the increase in gas prices.
The fixed-rate collection, according to the government, is justified to reduce the impact of higher bills due to increased gas consumption in winter.
New tariffs will be effective from Jan 1
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