LAHORE, March 17: The All Pakistan LPG Distributors Association on Monday said that it could not decrease price by Rs10 per kg as the distributors do not have that kind of margin available.

Addressing a press conference Fasih Ahmed, a spokesman of the association, said that the LPG distributors could not reduce prices from Rs65 to Rs55 per kilogramme on their own unless the marketing companies cut their ex-plant prices.

The reports carried by the national press in this regard only created confusion, he said. The distributors do not have enough margin to do so on their own, he added.

Irfan Khokhar, the central chairman of LPG Distributors Association, who made the price reduction announcement on Sunday, however, stuck to his stand and said prices would come down as promised by him.

Terming the All Pakistan LPG Distributors Association a “pocket union’ out to protect interest of a “rich few,” he said that time had come to put all those, who made illegal money through LPG sale, to trial.

In a press statement issued prior to the press conference, Mr. Khokhar insisted that the LPG prices would come down as announced by him and he would take the media men along to prove his claim.

Mr. Fasih, on his part, said that good news was that LPG prices were coming down in spite of prices of other competing fuels going up. The rollback has been made possible after the decision to de-link local LPG prices from the Saudi Arabian export price.

The new policy increased availability by only 0.24 per cent but increased consumer prices by 60 per cent. Had the policy been still in place, the local LPG prices could have touched Rs70 per kg, he added.

The government had linked local prices of LPG with Saudi Arabian export prices on January 3, 2007, which made them vulnerable to fluctuations in international prices. This policy, it can be claimed with hindsight, increased consumer prices by over 50 per cent without increasing the availability correspondingly. It created crisis in the local market.