KARACHI: Rising on a yearly basis, circular debt is especially prevalent inthe oil and gas sector of the country. At present, circular debt for thissector has increased to Rs480-500 billion in the current fiscal year.However, the government is allegedly going to pay off only about Rs100billion to the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), according to sources in theindustry.
What is alarming, is that despite the government which has already paid offRs53 billion to Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Pakistan State Oil(PSO), the circular debt has still soared to almost Rs500 billion.
On the other hand, the sales of OMCs stand at 20.1 million tons inJuly-April 2017-18, down 3.5 per cent Year on Year (YoY) as furnace oilsales continue to remain low in the wake of closures of furnace oil basedpower plants. HSD and MS provide strong support as automobile salescontinue to flourish up 22 per cent YoY for nine months 2017-18.
OMC sales remained at 1.9 million tons, up 6 per cent MoM, althoughdeclining by 16 per cent YoY.