ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday announced a special fuel relief scheme giving motorcycle, rickshaw, Qingqi and small-car users a discount of Rs100 on every litre of petrol, with registration opening the same day and the first phase of the rollout due in Islamabad within 48 hours.
The announcement lands two days before the government resumes negotiations with Jamaat-e-Islami over the petroleum levy — talks that were themselves pushed back by a day on the Prime Minister’s request — and a week before the party’s planned long march on the federal capital.
Under the scheme announced by the Prime Minister’s Office, owners of two- and three-wheelers — motorcycles, rickshaws and Qingqis — will get the Rs100-per-litre discount on a monthly quota of 20 litres. Owners of vehicles with engine capacities up to 800cc will get the same per-litre discount on a monthly quota of 30 litres.
That translates into a ceiling of Rs2,000 a month for two- and three-wheeler users and Rs3,000 a month for eligible small-car owners.
“The government is fully aware of the burden being placed on the public due to the increase in oil prices,” the Prime Minister was quoted as saying in the PMO statement, which said the premier had taken immediate notice of the rise in global oil prices driven by tensions in the Middle East.
The PMO statement did not specify how long the scheme will run.
The relief takes effect in the Islamabad Capital Territory from midnight between Monday and Tuesday — 12am on 15 September. For the rest of the country, including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, it begins from midnight between Wednesday and Thursday, or 12am on 17 September.
Registration opened on Sunday. The PMO said the procedure would be communicated to the public through an awareness campaign, and the Prime Minister thanked the provinces for supplying vehicle data on motorcycles, rickshaws and small cars for the registration process.
The detailed eligibility rules, the verification mechanism and the way the discount will be applied at the pump have not yet been spelled out in the announcement. Punjab has run large vehicle-linked registration drives before, most recently the chief minister’s e-bike scheme for students, which drew hundreds of thousands of sign-ups within days of opening.
The announced scheme is a wider version of the plan that had been circulating in Islamabad over the weekend.
Under that earlier proposal, reported before Sunday’s announcement, the Ministry of Petroleum and the Ministry of Finance had begun preparing a scheme on the Prime Minister’s instructions to pay every motorcycle owner Rs2,000 a month for an initial three months, routed through a fuel app. At Sunday’s pump price, that amount buys roughly five litres of petrol.
The scheme as announced keeps the same effective ceiling for bikers but changes the instrument. Instead of a flat cash payment, it is a discount tied to actual fuel purchases up to a capped volume — and it extends beyond motorcycles to rickshaws, Qingqis and cars up to 800cc, a category the earlier proposal left out. Rickshaw operators in Lahore had pressed for economic relief earlier this month, arguing that fuel costs were outrunning fares.
The design matters. A quota-based discount is targeted by vehicle registration and stops short of an across-the-board cut in pump prices, which is precisely what Pakistan’s external commitments rule out.
Federal Minister for Information Technology Shaza Fatima Khawaja, responding to a question before the announcement, had said the government was finalising details to deliver relief in line with the Prime Minister’s directions.
The Ministry of Finance rejected proposals to reduce the petroleum levy and to draw on the Rs430 billion emergency fund, citing conditions agreed with the International Monetary Fund. Sources cited in reporting on those internal discussions said the ministry’s position was that the emergency money was not intended for lowering the levy and that using it that way could compromise the IMF programme.
That rejection defines the policy space. The levy is a committed revenue line under the programme, so the government cannot bring down pump prices by cutting it without reopening the underlying framework. A capped, targeted discount sits outside the price mechanism — which is why it is the instrument that survived.
Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik had recommended in May, ahead of the budget, that the petroleum levy be set at Rs50 per litre with an annual collection target of Rs1 trillion.
Petrol was raised by Rs5.02 a litre on Friday to Rs375.82, and high-speed diesel by Rs5.28 to Rs403.32, under a notification issued by the Petroleum Division effective until 14 September. The government levies Rs114 per litre in taxes and duties on petrol and Rs100 per litre on diesel.
Fuel prices are now revised daily rather than fortnightly. OGRA moved to a daily pricing mechanism in July after renewed hostilities in the Gulf, with rates based on a seven-day rolling average of international benchmarks — a system that has at times delivered three increases inside three days.
The global backdrop has worsened again. The US-Iran war and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz have been compounded by threats to Bab al-Mandab and by an aerial attack that forced Saudi Arabia to shut its East-West pipeline, with traders warning of a significant hit to global supply if it is not restarted quickly. The International Energy Agency has said the 2026 supply gap will widen further than previously expected.
Even at Rs375.82, petrol remains below its April peak of Rs458.41 a litre; high-speed diesel peaked at Rs520.35 on 3 April.
Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal telephoned Jamaat-e-Islami Deputy Amir Liaqat Baloch on Sunday to seek one more day’s grace for the third round of talks on the petroleum levy.
According to Baloch, Ahsan Iqbal conveyed a message from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressing the wish that the round be held on Tuesday rather than Monday. Baloch said talks on the petroleum levy will now take place on Tuesday, 15 September, while negotiations on the Independent Power Producers issue will be held on Wednesday.
He said the government has formed one committee for negotiations with the party, and two separate committees for the levy and the IPP files. Two rounds have already been held in Islamabad without a final agreement. In the first, on 7 September, the party submitted six proposals and argued that the direct Rs80-per-litre levy on petrol and diesel was damaging the economy. After the second round, the government asked for three additional days to respond.
Splitting the levy and IPP files across consecutive days indicates the two subjects are being handled as separate tracks rather than as a single package — a structure that lets each side concede on one without conceding on the other. Calls for a forensic audit of IPP contracts have come from outside the negotiating room as well.
Jamaat-e-Islami Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said the announcement would not alter his party’s campaign. Addressing a gathering in Batkhela, he said the relief was a result of the party’s sit-ins and called on workers to prepare for the 20 September march on Islamabad.
In a separate statement, he said the party would examine the scheme in detail before setting out a formal position, but that its demand remained the complete abolition of the petroleum levy, and that sit-ins and the long march would continue until that happened.
The party says its protests against the levy and inflation have entered a 29th day, with sit-ins running in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Haripur and Swat, and protest camps at more than 35 locations including Sukkur, Chitral and Timergara. The campaign began on 16 August, and the party had earlier structured the Lahore sit-in as a three-stage escalation tied to withdrawal of the levy, holding the Charing Cross camp through late August and calling a nationwide strike on 3 September.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Barrister Gohar Khan on Sunday announced his party’s support for the sit-ins and said Jamaat-e-Islami would be invited to join PTI’s own long march.
The one-day slippage is not procedural housekeeping. With the march set for 20 September, both sides have a narrow window: two negotiating rounds in three days, and a mobilisation deadline at the end of the week. The relief scheme’s nationwide rollout on 17 September falls squarely inside that window.
The talks are running against a visible cost-of-living squeeze in Punjab. Alongside fuel, electricity surcharges and flour prices have moved together, the Lahore High Court has sought a reply by 15 September in a petition against power and gas load-shedding, and provincial price magistrates have imposed Rs121 million in fines in a crackdown on overcharging.
Daily rate movements are tracked in the paper’s Lahore market rate list.
The Lahore Times will update this story as registration details and the official notification are released.
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