Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF) President and FPCCI Businessmen Panel Vice Chairman Mian Zahid Hussain said on Friday that the business community supports the decision of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to lift moratorium on new gas connections.

“The decision will help masses to get new connections while trigger economic activities across the country; therefore, it will go down very well with the business community,” he said.

Hussain said that the decision would benefit many sectors of the economy including urea, textile, general industry, power sector and CNG. He added the government had initiated serious efforts to import gas from Iran and Turkmenistan, while a deal to import LNG from Qatar had also been finalised by the incumbent government.

He said, “Presently, one LNG terminal with capacity of 600 mmcfd is operational while another terminal with the matching capacity will start commercial operations within few months boosting supply of gas to 1200 mmcfd, reducing gas crisis substantially.”

He further said that ban on new gas connections were imposed in 2011 which resulted in many problems. He said, “The moratorium on gas connection does not benefit as connections were not provided to industries but line losses continued to increase while undocumented cost of every gas connections jumped to one hundred thousand rupees.”

He informed that the tendency of bribery for new gas connections added to the miseries of the masses while the illicit income of gas contractors crossed all the limits. The latest decision will not only help roll the wheels of economy but also increases the revenue of gas companies, he said.