Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Petroleum Nadeem Babar Monday said Pakistan was an agrarian country and needed to focus on producing clean bio fuels aimed at meeting its energy requirements indigenously.

"The bio fuel is a natural advantage that we have been blessed with by Allah Almighty but we have chosen to ignore it and squander so far. We must stop doing that...We need to start harnessing it," he said while addressing a conference titled "Clean Fuels-Bio Fuels 2020."

The conference, held here at the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited's auditorium, was organised by the Petroleum and Natural Resources Division and attended by experts from leading energy departments and academia.

The SAPM stressed the need for taking practical measures to adopt required measures to produce energy through alternative resources including biomass, adding it [bio fuels) had such a potential that it could become a central source of fuel in the country during next 10 years.

Nadeem Babar said the government wanted to encourage private sector in energy sector to create an atmosphere of competition among all players by providing them level-playing field.

Under its ease of doing business plan, the SAPM said the government had removed a number of bureaucratic hurdles to facilitate private sector in the energy sector. "We need to change previous trends of producing expensive energy.

We need inexpensive energy to overcome the circular debt," he said, adding the developed countries were

producing inexpensive electricity through biomass and waste.

He said around 41 percent electricity production of the country was based on imported fuels, which was not good for "our energy security and affordability."-PR