Petroleum Ministry is seeking to restart RBI's Special Market Operations to buy oil bonds from oil companies to ease the liquidity crunch faced by the state-run firms.
RBI in its credit policy, on July 29, announced an end to the Special Marketing Operations (SMO)
"We have taken up the issue with Ministry of Finance (MoF). In no way we can accept a situation that SMO is not there," Petroleum Ministry Additional Secretary S Sunderasan told reporters.
State-run retailers IOC, BPCL, HPCL are faced with huge liquidity crunch after Finance Ministry failed to issue oil bonds for the previous two quarters.
Sunderasan said the Ministry has also approached MoF for raising borrowing limits of the three companies so as to ease the liquidity crunch that has resulted in diesel and LPG shortages in some parts of the country.