• The Pharmaceutical and Drug Association, also known as PPDA, has decided to call off the strike that was supposed to start today.
• The new higher margin will start being used from September 1.
In a move to stop a strike by petroleum dealers the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the federal cabinet on Friday agreed to a 15.5 per cent rise in dealers’ profits on both petrol and high-speed diesel. After this decision the dealers canceled their protest that was set to start on Saturday.
The choice increases the dealers’ profit on both fuels by Rs1.34 per litre. It goes from Rs8.64 to Rs9.98 per litre. The new profit level will be in place starting from September 1.
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb led the ECC meeting from a distance. Finance Secretary Imdadullah Bosal was present in person, at the Finance Division. The meeting was held on a holiday. Petroleum dealers had announced a strike starting on August 15. This made the government deal with the issue quickly.
The Finance Division did not say how much the dealers margins will increase. Officials said the Economic Coordination Committee approved the plan that the Petroleum Division suggested.
The Economic Coordination Committee said yes to the increase that the Petroleum Division proposed, a senior official told Metro Live.
According to the plan that was given to the Economic Coordination Committee, the dealers margin will go up by Rs1.34 per litre to Rs9.98.
After this decision, the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association stopped its plan to go on strike across the country on Saturday. The association had given the government 72 hours to do something about their demands.
The dealers wanted the fixed margin to be changed to a margin that is linked to the prices of petrol and diesel. They wanted it to be 8 percent of the price of petrol and diesel.
If the government had said yes to this, the dealers margin would have gone up to around Rs 26 per litre on petrol. Rs30 per litre on diesel. This would have been a burden on the people who buy petrol and diesel.
The Economic Coordination Committee said yes to a 15.51 percent increase in the fixed margin instead.
The margin of oil marketing companies is still Rs7.87 per litre on both petrol and diesel. A plan to increase the oil marketing companies margin by Rs1.22 per litre is still linked to the use of measures.
The Finance Division said the Economic Coordination Committee looked at a plan from the Petroleum Division and talked about changing the dealers margins on petrol and diesel.
In December 2025, the Economic Coordination Committee said yes to an increase of Rs2.56 per litre in the dealers margins on petrol and diesel. Then the federal cabinet changed this decision, which made the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association want it to be implemented.
The dealers also wanted their margins to be linked to the prices of petrol and diesel because the prices are now changed every day. The government decided to keep changing the prices every day.
The Economic Coordination Committee had decided in December 2025 that half of the increase would start on December 15 if the prices of petrol and diesel were going down. The other half would start when the oil marketing companies and the dealers had done what they were supposed to do with digitisation.
On December 23, the federal cabinet changed this decision and said the increase would only happen when the oil marketing companies and the dealers had completed the digitisation targets.
The Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik met with the dealers on July 22 because they had called for a strike. The minister and the dealers talked about the digitisation drive and the margins.
The dealers told the government to separate the increase in their margins from the digitisation drive. They said it was mostly the responsibility of the oil marketing companies to do the digitisation.
The dealers also said again that they want the fixed margin to be changed to a margin that’s 8 percent of the price of petrol and diesel.
