ISLAMABAD: Federal government on Tuesday established a dedicated fund to manage petroleum price volatility, moving to create a financial buffer against the crude market swings that have repeatedly blindsided consumers at the pump.
The Ministry of Finance named it the Petroleum Prices Stabilization Fund. All money flowing into it will sit in the federal government’s Public Account. The ministry informed the Auditor General of Pakistan and the Accountant General of Pakistan Revenue on the very same day.
Also, Controllers General of Accounts of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Baluchistan were sent letters from Islamabad. The ministry wants every provincial accounts office inside the loop before the fund starts receiving money.
How the Fund Works
Three institutions will write its rulebook together: the Ministry of Finance, the Petroleum Division and OGRA. They need to satisfy legal and financial requirements before any framework takes effect. Separate approvals come after that. The ministry gave no deadline for completing either step.
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Pakistan revises petrol and diesel prices every two weeks, pegging them against global crude benchmarks and the rupee-dollar rate. When either moves hard and both have consumers feel it immediately. No buffer exists between a bad week on oil markets and a higher price at the nearest pump. Tuesday’s move tries to fix that structural gap, at least on paper.
Why It Matters
The fund’s rulebook doesn’t exist yet. Nobody has said how large it needs to grow before it can actually cushion a price spike, who pulls the trigger on a drawdown, or what formula determines when the government contributes versus withdraws. Those answers sit inside rules that Finance, Petroleum and OGRA haven’t written yet.
What the government did Tuesday was administrative groundwork: a formal name, a designated account, and letters to every relevant accounting authority across four provinces. The mechanism now exists legally. Whether money actually fills it fast enough to matter the next time crude moves sharply is a separate question entirely one Tuesday’s notification left unanswered.
