KARACHI, Dec 18: The Karachi Contractors Association (KCA) has urged the government to bring down bitumen (daamar) prices in line with a decline in petrol prices.

KCA chairman Naeem Kazmi in a statement said that there was unprecedented rise in bitumen prices though a steep fall has been recorded in petrol prices.

He said that in Sept 2007, when petrol was being quoted at Rs53.70 per liter, the rate of bitumen was Rs28,000 per ton and now when the rate of petrol has been reduced to Rs57.66 per liter the bitumen is being sold at Rs42,857 per ton.

He said that public and private sector projects were suffering equally owing to high prices of bitumen demanding that diesel prices should be cut further because this was also causing huge losses to contractors and developers.