Pakistan People's Party (PPP), co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday outrightly rejected the proposal to do away with the subsidy on imported oil from the next fiscal, it was reliably learnt. He said that to compensate the widening deficit gap, SoS missions be sent to Saudi Arabia, Iran and other oil producing Gulf countries for seeking their help to supply oil at subsidised rates.
Zardari made these remarks during a meeting with the Finance Minister, Naveed Qamar here, reacting to a report that the newly elected government plans to eliminate subsidies on oil in the new fiscal, returning to the previous mechanism of passing it on to the consumers.
Skyrocketing food inflation has already made the lift of common man difficult. Any burden in the shape of rapidly increasing prices of daily use commodities would be unbearable, especially for the low paid workers and salaried class.
The decision to not pass on oil prices to consumers is central to the new government's future steps in plugging fast rising budget deficit projected to rise to 9.5 percent of GDP in the ending fiscal. The government already endeavours to initiate measures to cut the expenditure, which will help in reducing the deficit to a great extent.