Devoid of practicalities.

Currently in the works, the petroleum price relief scheme aims to ease the inflation bite for low-income households without burdening the exchequer. It makes political sense for the embattling ruling coalition in an election year, but it has so far failed to generate goodwill even among the targeted beneficiaries: bikers, rickshaw drivers and small car users.

Four days after increasing petrol prices by Rs5 on 20th March to a record Rs272 per litre, Prime Miniter Shehbaz Shariff announced a petroleum relief scheme for the poor that would subsidise the price of petrol by Rs50 per litre for them. The scheme would cover motorcycles, rickshaws and under 800cc cars.

The relief petroleum package was intended to be financed by funds raised by charging extra to the rest of the petroleum users, who the government assumed to be affluent.

Sharing the details of the proposed scheme, Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik called it a pricing and not a subsidy scheme with two sets of prices for petrol users divided into two categories, decided based on the vehicle a person uses. The poor will pay Rs50 less than the market price, and the rich Rs50 more than the market rate, stretching the price gap between the two segments to Rs100.

Given the country's penchant for abusing subsidies, it is debatable whether the poor will be the real beneficiaries of the petroleum relief scheme

Each bike, rickshaw or small car driver can use the facility to acquire a maximum of 21 litres of petrol in a month but not more than three litres at a time. An app, that taps into the data of the National Database and Registration Authority and vehicle registration authorities to identify and verify the vehicle owners and their status, will facilitate providers and recipients of the subsidy. The SMS phone service will be used to communicate with the targeted recipients of price relief.

An auto sector contact shared an implementation model for the petroleum subsidy programme of the government but did not specify its source. It mentioned a Rs102 pricing differential between the two categories of petroleum users running 30.89 million vehicles in Pakistan, which included 26.5m two/three wheelers.

The car population in 2021 was 4m, and according to an estimate, motorbike consumption is over 50 per cent of petrol. The absence of an affordable public transport system has nudged the working masses towards bikes.

Besides multiple weaknesses pointed out by different stakeholders, the overriding...