Exclusively Pakistani experience
One would be hard pressed to find many countries facing fuel shortage in today’s age of cheap oil. Yet despite Brent crude having gone through the floor in the international market – and the N-government taking credit for reducing prices that owed to outside factors – parts of the country have been without fuel for days. In some parts, especially in Punjab and KP, long queues at petrol pumps, which require people to wait for their turn for many hours, have even led to rioting. Yet the government is more or less mute – in sharp contrast to recent rhetoric, where senior ministers took credit for making fuel more affordable – and there are little chances of a durable solution presenting itself anytime soon.
The matter, once again, pertains to the circular debt, and PSO’s inability to pay its dues. On the latter, there is hardly anything to write home about. PSO has been chronically bankrupt for years, forming a habit of asking for bailouts every now and then. And sceptics can be forgiven for not taking all of its cries of help at face value. And on the former, no wonder the government is quiet, since it has had a hard time of avoiding calls for the audit for its lump sum Rs500 billion bailout last year. Nobody knows where the money went or how it was prioritised. But everybody knows, though, that it took barely a year-and-a-half to climb back up to the level it first took five years getting to.
So what if the government’s promise – of sorting out the fuel problem by Monday/Tuesday – once again proves false? Already the days when the Marvi Memons of the ruling party would cite “superb economic indicators” are long gone. For a while N-league apologists tried to play the oil price collapse to their advantage, but they have suddenly disappeared when there is a need to explain just why were are the only fuel extinct country in the world in an age of cheap oil? Just like electricity and gas, the government now finds itself without an excuse to justify the fuel crunch. Some things, it seems, can only happen in Pakistan.
