As petrol prices continue to dent the pockets of buyers, Fawad Chaudhry, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, has said that the upward trajectory witnessed by the petroleum products is due to price hike in the international crude market.

Chaudhry, while justifying the price hike, said on Twitter that prices of petroleum products in Pakistan depend on global oil rates and there has been a jump in global crude prices.

The minister wrote, “Propaganda is being spread about soaring oil prices as if we [Pakistanis] live on a separate planet from the world.”

“The whole country cannot run on subsidies. Today, the prices are high. Tomorrow, when the prices will go down (in the international market), then they will follow suit here too, ” the information minister added.

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تیل کی قیمت میں اضافے کو لیکر ایسے پروپیگنڈا ہو رہا ہے جیسے ہم کوئ دنیا سے کسی علیحدہ سیارے پر ہیں اگر دنیا میں تیل، گیس اوپر جائیگا پاکستان میں بھی اوپر جائیگا، سارا ملک سبسڈی پر نہیں چل سکتا آج قیمتیں اوپر ہیں کل کم ہو جائینگی تو یہاں بھی کم ہو جائیں گی،

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) October 17, 2021

The incumbent government of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) came under heavy criticism after the petroleum prices went up by Rs 9 to 12 on Saturday.

The opposition termed the fresh petrol price hike a failure of the government and demanded Prime Minister Imran Khan’s immediate resignation from office to provide relief to the people.

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in a statement, said that the PTI had brought a tsunami of inflation in the country by raising prices of petroleum products to a record new high.

“By increasing the price of petrol by more than Rs 10 per litre, the government is actually charging the people for its own incompetence,” said Bilawal.

On the other hand, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif termed the increase in POL products’ prices as a “mini-budget.”

“Imran Niazi should resign instead of taking people’s lives with such killing inflation,” said Shehbaz while criticising the PTI government.