ISLAMABAD, Jan 16: The Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Distributors Association of Pakistan has demanded of the government to hold a judicial inquiry into the affairs of LPG companies for what it called earning Rs78 billion illegal profits from the general public last year through market manipulation.

Speaking at a press conference here on Tuesday, the officers-bearers of LPG distributor bodies from Sindh, Punjab and NWFP also blamed the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) for helping the LPG producers and marketing companies who deprived the people of billions of rupees as the industry kept on charging high profits and the Ogra looked the other way.

Irfan Khokhar, chairman of the association, quoted two sections of the LPG policy that required the Ogra to "regularly monitor LPG prices and intervene in exceptional circumstances if the consumer prices are considered not reasonable".

He said the distributors had been writing to the Ogra to intervene into black-marketing and overpricing of the product through manipulation and cartelisation by the LPG companies but the Ogra did not even bother to meet them and hear about the ground realities.

He said the LPG price in India stood at Rs231 per 11.8kg compared with about Rs700 per the same mass in Pakistan. This was despite the fact that India was producing just 7,000 tons of LPG and importing over 33,000 tons as against Pakistan’s consumption of 1,800 tons, only five to six per cent of which was met through imports, he added.

He revealed that the production cost of LPG in Pakistan was just Rs5,000 per ton as against its ex-plant sale price of over Rs25,000 per ton. He alleged that the Ogra had fixed the profit margin of LPG marketing companies at Rs106 per 11.8 kg cylinder but the companies were charging between Rs269-336 per cylinder while the margin of distributors remained fixed at Rs23.