The people will have to pay more for the electricity they use as the federal government decided to reduce the relief provided to them through subsidy, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Saturday.

The move came as the government surrendered to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Federal Minister Hammad Azhar did not even mention the salaries and pensions of state employees as well as the minimum wages for the workers.

The budget proposals show that the subsidy amount has been slashed by Rs111 billion, meaning that the citizens will get electricity at a higher per unit price.

In this scenario, the amount allocated for the K-Electric consumers is reduced by Rs34 billion. Similarly, the subsidy reserved for the power distribution companies covering other parts of the country is slashed by Rs77 billion.

According to the budget document, the reviewed subsidy amount for the consumers other than that of the K-Electric is Rs201 billion.

The IMF has been pressing the government to further reduce the subsidy and increase the utilities’ tariff after it succeeded in ensuring liberalisation of dollar pricing mechanism, leaving it to the market to determine the exchange rate.

In his budget speech, Hammad again repeated the stance that the previous government maintained a stronger rupee artificially.

With the zero pay raise and higher electricity tariff, the people will now face more financial burden as their purchasing power has already been reduced by inflation.