Shaukat Tarin Chairs ECC Meeting

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet met under the chairmanship of Federal Minister for Finance, Shaukat Tarin at the PM’s Secretariat here Tuesday.

The ECC approved the recommendations of the PPIB Board for the revival of 10.5 MW power project by Davis Energen Limited.

ECC made it mandatory to produce national identity cards to get a pack of 2 kg sugar from the USC outlets.

The ECC allowed allocation of additional 16 MMCFD gas to the Pakarab Fertilizer Limited from SNGPL system from 2012 upto 2019.

The ECC also decided that the Shell’s offer at 15% Brent + $ 0.50 per MMBTU, subject to further improvement in the final round of negotiations will be accepted for upto 1MTPA Medium Term supplies of 6 years and 2.5 MTPA from 7 to 20 years.

The ECC was told that the overall CPI-based inflation registered decrease of 0.49 percent in December 2009 over November, 2009.

The stock of wheat as on January 31, 2010 amounted to 5.9 million tons as against 1.7 million tons in the same period last year, thereby showing a higher stock of about 4.2 million tons compared with last year.

The meeting was informed that trade deficit improved by 29.0 percent to $ 7.0 billion in July-December 2009-10 from $ 10.0 billion in the same period last year.

The ECC noted that workers remittances amounted to $ 4,531.0 million in July-December 2009-10 as against $ 3,640.0 million, showing an increase of 25.0 percent over the same period last year.

Foreign exchange reserves stood at $ 14.5 billion as on February 4, 2010 – up from $ 6.4 billion on November 25, 2008.

The provisional FBR tax collection stood at Rs.693.3 billion on net bases during July-January 2009-10 as compared to Rs.630.5 billion in the same period last year, thereby posting an increase of 10.0 percent.