Minister of State for Petroleum Musadik Malik reasserted that the Pakistani government had held negotiations with Russia for buying crude petroleum oil products.

The minister, talking to private news channel, said Russia had agreed to sell petroleum products to Pakistan at discounted rates as compared to international market

He hoped that current inflation would witness a considerable drop after Pakistan receives the petroleum crude oil products from Russia.

The statement comes at a time when Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto told an international media outlet that Pakistan was not pursuing and receiving any discounted energy from Russia.

In reply to a question, Bilawal Bhutto said: “As far as Russia is concerned, we aren’t pursuing or receiving any discounted energy, but we are facing an extremely difficult economic situation, inflation, pump prices.”

“We are exploring various avenues to expand our areas where we can get our energy from,” he said, adding that importing energy from Russian will “take a long time for us to develop”.