Recently issued bills show that KESC has increased one-sided rates of fuel adjustment charges from January to March 2007, Towel Manufacturers' Association of Pakistan said on Friday. It said in a release that rates of fuel adjustment charges during three months are as follow: January 0.18 paisas, February 0.36 paisas and in March it raised to 0.58 paisas.
Keeping in view declining trend in exports of the country in all sectors, despite of providing additional support to the industry by the government and allowing further incentives for the purpose of brining down total cost of productions for doing business in environment of free trade regime of the world, KESC has abruptly increased tariff of fuel adjustment charges without taking stakeholders in confidence.
This practice will be further blow to the industry and its impact will shadow on the total exports of the country. The badly needed foreign exchange earnings of the county would consequently go down, Muzzamil Hussain, chairman of the association said. Recently OGRA has decided to decrease gas prices to the extent of 10 percent because the oil prices in international markets are also decreasing.
In this scenario, how KESC took courage to increase in tariff rates despite of the fact that it could not even take a step in increasing tariff rates without consulting the government constituted body Nepra, according to the law.
In view of the foregoing, the business community requests to the Prime Minister, Minister for Commerce and Textile Industry to look into this mater and instruct KESC to withdraw enhancement of tariff rates immediately so that exports of the country may not be hurt further.