Rise in LPG prices vexes consumers

The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (Unisame) has invited the attention of the director general, Oil & Gas Regulating Authority (Ogra), to the unethical tactics of the marketing companies. Unisame President Zulfikar Thaver has said the LPG prices have been subject to wild variation in the recent months. It all started with the producers raising their prices arbitrarily, he added.
As a result, the marketing companies also increased their prices to their distributors by almost 50 percent, he said, adding this resulted in protest by the LPG distributors who claimed that they were victims to the rage of the consumers accusing them of black-marketing the product.
The marketing companies on the other hand took a plea of having to do this, because of exorbitant increase of the LPG by the refineries from Rs 17,000 to over Rs 22,000 per ton.
After a two-day shutter down strike by LPG dealers and the matter being brought to the notice of the government by the Opposition members in the Senate.
The government ordered refineries to bring down the prices to previous level. This immediately had a favourable impact on the prices, and provided much needed relief to the consumers.
However, at the onset of winter, the gas available locally is not able to meet the domestic needs. As is usually done every year in winter, the marketing companies reverted to import of gas.
The ruling by Ogra, that price difference between local and imported product in the ratio of their import, be passed on to consumers resulted in an increase in the price of LPG.
However, the ratio of averaging out their local and imported product price as directed by Ogra is being openly flouted by the marketing companies.
The marketing companies having a fair share of quota from local refineries have used import as an excuse.
Buying a small quantity of imported gas from pooled resources, they are resorting to price increase without adhering to the Ogra formula.
Sources in LPG circles pointed out almost all these companies had by now exhausted their imported product and therefore need to bring down their prices to the previous level.
This is evident from these companies putting their distributors on quota instead of full supplies, which were made to them in previous two weeks.
However, except for the government-owned Pakistan State Gas, no other company has brought down its prices, including two well-known multinationals, thus openly violating government's instructions.
Zulfikar Thaver on behalf of SME Consumers has drawn government's attention to these unethical tactics of the LPG marketing companies.
He has asked Ogra not to be a silent spectator to this manipulation of the prices at the expense of the common man.