KARACHI, Jan 6: The Sindh High Court suspended the operation of a notification lowering cement prices to the 2003-level and imposing hefty fines on manufacturers for not complying with it and issued the Monopoly Control Authority (MCA) a preadmission notice for Jan 17 in a petition moved by four mills.

Advocate Khalid Anwer argued on behalf of the petitioner manufacturers that the authority had no power to fix prices under the MCA Ordinance. Under Section 12 of the ordinance, the authority could intervene only if prices were fixed or arbitrarily raised by a cartel.

He contended that the cement manufacturers, including public sector concerns, suffered a loss of about Rs 790 million in the January-March 2003 period because of low prices.

The manufacturers, he maintained, would suffer a much bigger loss if the prices were reverted to the January-March 2003 level because the prices of coal and other raw material had increased manifold in the meanwhile. The lawyer said it was for market forces to determine prices on the basis of free competition.

The MCA had also prescribed a one-time penalty of Rs 100,000 and a fine of Rs 10,000 every day a manufacturer violated the new price notification.

Directing that a notice be issued to the MCA for Jan 17, a division bench, comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui, stayed the operation of the impugned notification in the meanwhile.