Shaukat Tarin admits govt did not buy LNG cargoes in time

Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tarin admitted Tuesday that the government was unable to buy LNG cargoes in time.

In an interview to journalist Nadeem Malik, the former finance minister said the government did not buy LNG cargoes and later, when the commodity became scarce in the international market, its prices shot up.

He admitted that nobody in the government knew about the international prices which were quite high and the government should have purchased some cargoes earlier. The advisor on finance said country’s imports of petroleum and gas touched almost $20 billion per year which had been at $12 to $13 billion per year and now it had to pay $7-8 billion more in that regard.

Tarin also spoke about foreign companies who can extract gas in Pakistan, saying that they have left the country while local companies do not have the resources to extract gas, and have liquidity issues.