Pakistan loses $8 billion investment after bureaucratic negligence

Pakistan has almost lost $8 billion investment due to the bureaucratic negligence after Saudi Arabia offered to establish an oil refinery in Pakistan but the country is lacking a policy.

In front of bureaucratic indecisiveness and negligence, even the oil refinery offer by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was not heard in Pakistan.

Saudi Arabia has been offering to install an $8 billion worth of oil refinery in Pakistan since February 2019, but this dream could not be realized due to the traditional laziness of the ministers and bureaucracy. In Pakistan, the Saudi prince and long-time friend Muhammad bin Salman was not heard of either.

Hassan Yousafzai, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum revealed that there has been no progress in 4 years on Saudi Arabia’s offer in public accounts, and the committee was stunned.

Additional Secretary Petroleum Hasan Yousafzai said that despite the offer of this refinery, Pakistan could not formulate its oil refinery policy. He said that Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Salman had announced an investment in an oil refinery on the occasion of his visit to Pakistan in February 2019.

Saudi Arabia wanted to establish oil refineries in Hub and Gwadar.

Additional Secretary Petroleum said that the draft of the refinery policy was prepared last month, but two more months are still required, it took more than a year to prepare the refinery policy.

Economists say that the delay of the oil refinery due to policy or any other reason has ultimately harmed Pakistan’s economy and environment.

If these oil refineries were installed in Hub and Godar, unemployment in Baluchistan would be reduced and Euro 5 or Euro 6 petrol would be available to Pakistan locally and Pakistan would also have the capacity to export petroleum products from these two places which would increase Pakistan’s exports. And Pakistan could earn foreign exchange.