IT is often considered disrespectful to bring up remarks made by Prime Minister Imran Khan when he was in the opposition.

But there is no harm in recalling that he did at the time berate the then government for not passing on the full impact of declining oil prices to the people.

His close colleague, Asad Umar, was on air regularly to talk about how damaging it was for the government to use taxes on oil and gas to generate revenue while Mr Khan conveyed his message at rallies repeatedly.

To even suggest in those days that taxing oil was actually a routine practice around the world and that most countries were slow in passing on the benefits of falling oil prices to consumers was treated by the PTI as a suggestion without any merit.

When the party came to power, it found in place a budget that had an automatic mechanism that could be used to make adjustments in taxes on oil prices to compensate for revenue shortfalls in other areas.

In one of its mini budgets earlier on, the PTI government got rid of this mechanism amid claims that it was immoral and wrong and that the new way of doing things would not rely on taxing fuels to generate state revenue because it was inflationary and burdened the masses.

But today, when faced with their first large oil price drop, the government has resorted to previous tactics, perhaps in an even more aggravated form than its predecessors.

Oil prices have plummeted in international markets on the back of a sharp slowdown in economic activity following virus-related shutdowns, particularly in China.

Instead of sharing this price drop with the people, the government has decided to sharply increase the rate of the petroleum levy on petrol and diesel, passing on a meagre part of the declining price to the people and keeping the rest for itself to buttress its revenues.

This may be in keeping with past practices.

But today, the people are expected to forget that they were promised anything different.

Faced with a mounting revenue shortfall, and tough targets inscribed in the IMF programme, the government has little choice but to resort to leaning on those revenue lines that are most elastic.

It is understandable that the government is employing the same means.

But it is equally understandable why the opposition is roasting the government for it.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2020