ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Finance is opposed to the waiver of pending Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) amount, the Senate Special Committee for monitoring the implementation of GIDC Bill 2015 was informed on Friday.

Senator Ilyas Bilour, chairman of the committee, expressed his disappointment over the absence of the petroleum minister and secretary petroleum from the meeting. He commented the ministries of finance and petroleum were not taking the committee recommendations seriously.

“We want to reach towards a solution over the matter,” he noted.

However, Secretary Finance Dr Waqar Masood said the finance ministry was ready to accept justified demands of the All Pakistan CNG Association (APCNGA). He added that the entire outstanding amount of Rs42 billion GIDC cannot be waived off.

Dr Masood assured the committee that finance ministry along with APCNGA and Ministry of Petroleum will look into the matter and bring consensus recommendations to the committee soon.

The committee was briefed by Additional Secretary Ministry of Petroleum, Furqan Bahadur Khan who said the GIDC Act 2015 was passed by the Parliament.

The act provided that the cess received by the CNG stations from its consumers under the GIDC Act 2011 and GIDC Ordinance 2014 would be valid under the provisions of the GIDC Act 2015.

“Therefore, the cess is applicable retrospectively, however the ministry was ready to discuss the issue with CNG sector,” he added.

On the other hand the Committee has been informed by the CNG sector that many CNG stations did not charge the GIDC from consumers as they had obtained stay orders from the courts of law.

It was finally decided that all stakeholders needed to submit their viable plan to the Committee so that the matter could be settled at the earliest.

The meeting was attended by Lt Gen (Retd) Abdul Qayyum, Professor Sajid Mir, Mohsin Aziz, Hilal ur Rehman, Saeedul Hassan Mandokhel and Mohammad Mohsin Khan Leghari.

Reduced GIDC offered

Talking to the media after the meeting, a petroleum ministry official said the total outstanding amount against CNG sector was Rs42 billion. The petroleum ministry has offered to reduce the amount to Rs28billion but APCNGA wants to clear all the pending amount by paying Rs16bn, the official added.

Meanwhile, the APCNGA blamed the finance ministry for creating hurdles.

“After the directives of the Senate committee, we hired a chartered accountant to calculate the outstanding GIDC amount, but the Ministry of Finance is not accepting the report,” Ghiyas Abdullah Paracha of APCNGA alleged.

Published in Dawn September 24th, 2016