ISLAMABAD: The Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, informed the Senate on Thursday that his ministry had sent a summary to the Economic Coordination Committee of the cabinet for deregulation of the country’s CNG sector.

After deregulation of the sector, he said, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority would not determine the CNG price.

The minister was speaking on a motion seeking to adopt a report of the Senate Special Committee to Monitor the Implementation of Gas Infrastructure Development Cess Bill, 2015. The house adopted the motion through a voice vote despite opposition by the government.

Earlier, the Senate witnessed chaos because of a hasty ruling by Deputy Chairman Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, who declared the report as “adopted” without seeking the opinion of the petroleum minister, despite the fact that Mr Abbasi had specially been called to attend the session.

When the minister took the floor and said that he had come to the house only to oppose the motion, opposition members protested, saying the chair had already issued a ruling and now debate could not be held on the issue.

Maulana Haideri, who had been presiding over the session for the past three days in the absence of Chairman Raza Rabbani, had no clue as to what to do when he was rescued by Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq and some of the opposition members. They suggested that the members should be allowed to speak on the motion and then he could put the motion for a vote.

Opposing the motion moved by Mohsin Aziz of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, the minister said the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess had been levied under an act of parliament and there was no illegality in its collection.

The opposition members said that the committee had been constituted by the house to suggest recommendations to remove anomalies from the bill. The cess had initially been imposed through a presidential ordinance.

Mohsin Aziz reminded the house that the minister had himself admitted at the time of the passage of the bill last year that there were certain anomalies in the bill as its draft had been prepared in haste and that the government would accept and implement the recommendations of the committee.

Ilyas Bilour of the Awami National Party and Kamil Ali Agha of the PML-Q also spoke in support of the motion, and asked Mr Haideri to put the motion to vote.

The minister said industrial units which had collected the cess would have to pay and only those would be exempted who had not collected it due to any reason. He said it was a serious matter involving over Rs100 billion. The revenue being collected under this head would not only benefit the federal government but the provinces also would share it, he added.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2016