Petroleum levy: JI chief refuses PM Shehbaz meeting without a cut, sets 12 Oct deadline

Jamaat-e-Islami chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman says he will not meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif unless the government first commits to abolishing the petroleum levy, and has given it until Monday 12 October to offer relief before the party announces a date for a march on Islamabad, Dawn reported on Sunday.

"If the petroleum levy is not abolished, we have no desire to meet the prime minister," he told a press conference at Mansoorah, Lahore, on Saturday, according to Dawn.

What a petroleum levy cut is worth at the pump

Petrol is Rs 398.30 a litre and high speed diesel Rs 396.24 under the Petroleum Division's notification for 10 to 12 October, and the government is collecting about Rs 114 a litre in taxes and duties on petrol and Rs 100 on diesel, Dawn reported on Friday.

For a family car, the tax share is easy to see:

• A 40-litre tank of petrol costs about Rs 15,932 at today's price, of which roughly Rs 4,560 is taxes and duties.
• A 10-litre motorcycle tank costs about Rs 3,983, with about Rs 1,140 of tax in it.

Any cut only reaches you once it is notified, so do not change your buying on statements from either side. Run your own monthly figure on the fuel cost calculator, and track the daily pump rate on our petrol price page and diesel price page.

How the meeting became a bargaining chip

The government has been trying to bring JI to the table for a week. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, who heads the government's committee on the issue, called JI vice chief Liaqat Baloch on 6 October to pass on the prime minister's wish to meet the JI chief, Dawn reported at the time. The prime minister had earlier asked JI to suspend its Karachi to Islamabad march until the two leaders met, and the party paused it.

Rehman's position now is that a meeting without an assurance on the levy would be pointless. He said ministers' recent statements suggested the levy would stay.

JI's other demands

At the same press conference, according to Dawn, the JI chief:

• said the party had held 42 days of sit-ins against the levy and is continuing public meetings and a signature campaign, with a rally in Okara on Sunday 11 October;
• urged the government to pass on to consumers the $5 a barrel cut Saudi Arabia is reported to have offered Asian buyers;
• questioned why IMF limits did not stop spending on an Rs 11 billion aircraft;
• said a 50 kg bag of DAP fertiliser had risen by Rs 3,000, and flour had crossed Rs 6,000 a maund.

What happens next

• Monday 12 October: JI's deadline for relief. The current fuel prices also run to that date, so the next price notification and JI's deadline fall together.
• After 12 October: JI says it will announce the date of an Islamabad march if no relief comes.
• Government: no notification on the levy has been issued. In September the government floated scrapping the levy for a year, which we worked out at the pump, but nothing came of it.

We will update this story when the government responds or a new fuel price is notified.