OMCs, petrol pumps involved in hoarding: PM's aide.

ISLAMABAD -- Adviser to the Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar said on Saturday that there was sufficient evidence to show that oil marketing companies (OMCs) and petrol pump owners were storing oil in the current month while expecting an increase in the prices.

'If we compare the OMC sales figures in the first 10 days of June this year it was 52 per cent higher than the same period of last year and the average sales till today was around 32-33pc higher than that of June 2019,' he said, adding it was not possible that consumption had jacked up significantly over last year.

'This means that a major part of oil was going towards hoarding,' Mr Babar said while addressing a press briefing with federal Minister for Power and Petroleum Omar Ayub Khan.

The adviser said that oil prices were rapidly rising at the international markets but were significantly low in Pakistan and therefore the OMCs and the dealers were maintaining stocks to make inventory gains.

'We need to devise policies to contain such manipulations in future and the government is working on structural changes to streamline the supply chain and strengthen the regulator to enable it to implement the rules,' he said.

Nadeem says petrol is being sold at Rs100 per litre in Pakistan while its price in Bangladesh and China is Rs138 or more

The three main reforms in this regards were shutdown of illegal petrol stations and storage depots, implementing automation systems at storage depots of oil companies and at the points of sale (petrol pumps) too so that live sales data might be available to the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra), he said.

While Mr Babar acknowledged that the regulator was not powerful enough to enforce its decisions and that the solutions of similar crises in future was to strengthen Ogra and empower it to suspend the operational licence of any oil company if it continued to violate the terms of its licence.

He said that OMCs were not fulfilling the requirements to maintain 21 days of stocks of their average sales and strict measures were required to implement this requirement.

He said there was a need to upgrade laws and rules to enhance the penalties and fines imposed on the OMCs for such violations. 'CurArently the penalties imposed on the OMCs were actually peanuts.'

Mr Babar said that automation of supply chain was essential as even the OMCs did not have updated data of sales by their petrol pumps.

'There are around 9,000 legal petrol pumps and around...