Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora on Monday indicated that the prices of petrol, diesel, kerosene oil and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinder would soon come down in the next few weeks.
Central government was mulling further cut down in the prices of cooking gas and other petroleum products, as the prices of crude oil is free falling in the international market and government wanted to pass the benefits to public, said Deora.
The minister was speaking at a function to felicitate Hibi Eden, the newly elected president of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the youth wing of the Congress party, at Kochi.
Though he did not announce any time frame but said that it would take few weeks as the cabinet would analyse the situation of OMCs those were facing heavy losses.
“We are now assessing the losses incurred by them (public sector oil firms). Once we ascertain the loss, we will fix the new prices of these products,” said Deora.
At present, the OMCs are selling petrol and diesel in the margin of Rs.12 and Rs.3 a litre while bearing the heavy loss on kerosene by Rs.17.26 and LPG cylinder by Rs.148.38 per cylinder.
Earlier on December 06, the Centre had reduced the prices of petrol by Rs. 5 and diesel by Rs. 2 but the prices of kerosene oil and cooking gas were remain untouched. This time, however, the government may consider trimming down the prices of domestic LPG cylinder, announced Deora.
‘But the prices of kerosene would not be changed as government had not hiked the prices of cooking oil when the crude oil prices were much higher in international market,’ he added.
Thus, now when the prices of crude oil were at steep fall, the government would not cut it and would continue to provide it at subsidised rate, he said.
Keeping in mind the importance of kerosene for a large number of poor people especially for urban livings, it is merely charged Rs.9 per litre, the cheapest in the world, said Murli.
According to the Oil Ministry estimation, the public sector OMCs is expected to bear the cumulative loss of Rs.1,10,000-crore while for healing the heavy loss of OMCs, the government has decided to compensate up to some extent by issuing oil bonds of worth Rs.44,000-crore in this fiscal for public sectors OMCs.
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