ISLAMABAD - The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Tuesday summoned secretaries meeting on Wednesday (today) to resolve the circular debt issue which, as per secretary petroleum’s statement, was increasing by Rs 20 billion every month.
Secretary Petroleum, during the meeting on Tuesday, told the PAC that Rs 377 billion current circular debt was outstanding against Ministry of Water and Power and it was increasing by Rs 20 billion every month making the situation more and more severe for the coming days.
He also told the committee that petroleum sector was bearing around 70 per cent of circular debt as it was providing fuel following no payments. The same was the case with the gas supplies made to Wapda as the authority had not paid any interest on the gas provided to it since 2000.
Chairman PAC Nadeem Afzal Gondal, hearing the circular debt issue, called the secretaries meeting on Wednesday (today). Secretaries including Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources, Finance and Water and Power along with their chief financial officers (CFOs) will attend the meeting.
Secretary petroleum had a plea that the major share in the failure of ministry on many fronts was of Ministry of Water and Power. The committee members, rejecting the plea of Secretary Petroleum, said the Petroleum Ministry had failed to collect gas development surcharge.
During the meeting committee members came down hard on Secretary Petroleum Waqar Masood over lapsing of development funds in their constituencies despite approved development schemes and projects especially related to Sui Northern Gas Pipelines.
Moreover, PAC showed displeasure over non-preparedness of secretary and his team to the audit observations and replies to the audit objections which the members called it a non-serious attitude towards proceedings of the committee.
PAC directed ministry to fix responsibility for not preparing compliance report of directives of committee in one month. However, committee applauded preparedness of Sohail Ahmad, legal advisor to PSO, for being well-informed about different cases pending in the courts.
PAC was further told that there were 7,480 and 316 cases sub-judice of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL) and Sui Southern Gas Pipelines (SSGPL) and Pakistan State Oil (PSO) had won 120 cases in the recent past. Committee gave one month deadline to ministry for out of court settlement of cases pending with courts.
To an audit para about loss of Rs 3.120 million due to short delivery of POL products, PAC directed Abid Saeed, Additional Secretary, to look into the matter and report back to committee in one month.
Similarly, committee directed ministry to fix responsibility of non-recovery of Rs 158 million as cost of supplied HSD by PSO in 15 days. PAC also directed MD PSO to resolve three audit paras involving more than Rs 70 million.
While responding to queries of members, secretary petroleum said negotiations with Qatar for import of LNG were in initial stage while ECC had principally decided to move ahead in talks with Qatar as well as provision of government guarantee in this regard.
At the end, members complained against government policy for the inauguration of public development schemes in their constituencies by their rival candidates who had lost elections against them. They also lamented against violation of merit in the provision of gas connections to consumers in their respective constituencies.
Responding to these observations, secretary petroleum said government had no such policy and asked the panel to look into the matter minutely saying that no discrimination would be made in the provision of gas supply connections to people.