Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday announced that there would be no change in the prices of petroleum products for the next fortnight.

"The government has decided that the prices of petroleum products at this moment, from Oct 16, will be maintained for the next 15 days. There will be no change in them," he said in a press conference in Islamabad.

The current prices for petrol are Rs224.80 per litre, Rs235.30 for HSD, Rs186.50 for LDO and Rs191.83 for kerosene. On October 15, too, the government had decided to keep the petrol prices unchanged.

During his brief media talk today, Dar noted that today was the last day to file tax returns. "But since it got a lot of representation from different groups, we have decided to extend the date to Nov 30," he said.

This is the second extension issued by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Earlier, the board extended the date for filing income tax returns for individuals and companies till October 31.

The finance minister also said that there were around 8,000 cases of suspended letters of credit (LCs) two weeks back. "Previously, the government had announced that LCs and payments of up to $50,000 would be released.

"I had a meeting with the SBP (State Bank of Pakistan) governor today and we have decided, with the involvement of SBP, that we will increase this amount to $100,000. The SBP will start clearing them tomorrow," Dar said.

He added that 4,400 out of 8,000 LCs had been cleared and the new move would further clear 1,365 cases.