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ISLAMABAD: Federal government has decided to keep prices of petroleum products unchanged for the next fortnight, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced on Tuesday.
The prices have been unchanged until the next fortnight (November 30).
The current prices for petrol are Rs224.80 per liter, Rs235.30 for HSD, Rs186.50 for LDO and Rs191.83 for kerosene. On October 30, too, the government had decided to keep the petrol prices unchanged.
“The government has decided, after permission from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, that there will be no increase in any petroleum products. All the items, petrol, diesel, light diesel oil and kerosene […] their prices will remain unchanged from Nov 16 to Nov 30,” Dar said in a press conference in Islamabad.
The State Bank of Pakistan and the National Bank of Pakistan have approached the Supreme Court withdraw their appeals against the Federal Shariat Court’s (FSC) directive to the government to completely convert the banking system to Shariah-compliant banking by December 2027, Dar said during his brief media appearance today.
Also read: Pakistan has enough foreign reserves to meet obligations: SBP governor
The FSC had earlier this year ordered the federal government and provincial governments to change pertinent laws and issued orders mandating that the nation’s banking system be interest-free by December 2027.
Commercial banks and the central bank had subsequently filed an appeal before the Supreme Court (SC) challenging the FSC verdict.
However, last week, Dar had said that the SBP and NBP would withdraw their appeals, adding that the government would quickly try to implement Islamic banking system in the country.
In a key development, Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Jameel Ahmad said on Monday that the central bank has sufficient stocks of foreign exchange reserves and Letter of Credits (LC) cases up to 100,000 will be cleared by end of this week.
Speaking to the press on the sidelines of a ceremony at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Mr Ahmad said there’s no reason to worry about a shortage of foreign exchange liquidity. “Our reserves are over $7.9 billion. They’re more than sufficient to meet any obligations,” the governor said.
Foreign exchange reserves of the SBP dropped $956 million during the week ending on Nov 4 because of external debt servicing, including a $500m commercial loan repayment to China.
