The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) while rejecting another two percent increase in electricity tariff has termed it detrimental to both the trade and industry and urged the government to withdraw it immediately.
The LCCI office bearers, President Shahzad Ali Malik, Senior Vice President, Sheikh Muhammad Arshad and Vice President, Sohail Azhar in a joint statement on Friday said that both the trade and industry were already in dire straits because of multiple internal and external challenges and the recent hike was bound to aggravate the situation further. They said that the people at the helm of affairs should convince the international donors that the time was not opportune for such an increase.
They said that the government should concentrate on reducing transmission and distribution losses and improving the efficiency instead of blindly acting on the dictates of international donors that have little knowledge about the ground realities in Pakistan. The new hike was an anti-industry and anti-people step that would trigger another wave of price-hike. "There is no justification for any further hike in power prices because in the first place the rates are already too high and secondly the oil prices at international level are not going upward." The manufacturing sector was already in bad shape due to high cost of doing business and with the fresh increase the economy would suffer heavily, they added.
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