PESHAWAR, July 18: Pakistan has lost $2.3 million foreign exchange in two weeks because of the government’s decision of allowing export of ‘imported’ petroleum items to Afghanistan, a senator from the treasury benches said here on Friday.

Many filling stations in the NWFP and Balochistan were exporting subsidised high speed diesel and kerosene oil to Afghanistan instead of selling it to the local consumers, Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour of the Awami National Party told a press conference.

According to Senator Bilour, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had allowed export of petroleum to the neighbouring country on May 10 in Pakistani rupees following which more and more filling stations were opting for dispatching their subsidised stock across the border.

“It is not only the violation of well-defined rules, but also a big scandal,” remarked Mr Bilour, asking the federal government to immediately stop this practice and make accountable those responsible for it.

Quoting the official statistics, he informed that around 2.382 million litters of high speed diesel and 0.513 million litters of kerosene oil had been exported to the neighbouring country just within the last two weeks.

“This means it had caused a loss of Rs107 million to the national kitty on account of subsidy, the government had paid to offset the impact of high oil prices on local consumers,” he maintained.

Flanked by Ghulam Sarwar Mohmand, former president Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), Senator Bilour accused the FBR for misinterpreting its export policy. He explained that the prime tax collecting agency of the country had allowed the oil export on the basis of an SRO dated October 8, 2007 that allowed export of locally manufactured items only.

Since, oil was not an indigenous product and the government imported it for catering the local demand, how its export could be allowed, questioned Mr Bilour.

Ghulam Sarwar termed the oil export a two-edged sword for the national economy, adding that the country was spending much foreign reserves on oil import, while in return it did not get foreign reserves because the export was in Pakistani rupees. “This is very strange and I don’t know what the logic behind this decision is,” he said.

Mr Mohmand said that the matter had been taken up with the federal government and they were waiting for its response. He said that the local business community had resolved that irrespective of any political affiliations, protest would be lunched against those policies, which were not in the national interest. Unilaterally, the SCCI had stopped issuing Letter of Origin, a document mandatory for exports to Afghanistan, to discourage cross-border movement of oil, he added.