| "With the OIDB corpus of Rs 60,000 crore, oil companies should get a share out of it," Deora said after meeting Singh today. |
| Deora told Singh, whom he met along with Finance Minister P Chidambaram and chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council C Rangarajan to discuss implementation of the Rangarajan Committee report on fuel pricing, that the net worth of oil retailers "" IBP, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum "" would become nil in two months, two years and three years respectively. |
| He sought a transparent mechanism like that for food and fertiliser subsidies for disbursing subsidies on cooking gas and kerosene, to bridge the difference between the cost and selling prices of the fuels. |
| While the subsidy from the Budget has remained static at Rs 2,900 crore, the government has resorted to issue of bonds worth Rs 11,500 crore in the current fiscal to cover for losses on the two cooking fuels. "If food and fertilisers can get huge subsidies, the petroleum sector should not be left out," the minister said. |
| Deora said issues regarding duty rationalisation, increasing the price of cooking gas by Rs 75 and the issue of targeted distribution of PDS kerosene to below poverty line households were also discussed. |
| "There are still some issues that are to be resolved and we will have another meeting with the prime minister next week," he added. |
| The Rangarajan Committee on fuel pricing had suggested a steep rise of Rs 75 per LPG cylinder and a moderate Rs 1.21 per litre increase in petrol and Rs 1.96 per litre hike in diesel prices while asking for a customs duty cut on auto fuel. |
| With regard to reducing the sales tax on cooking gas to 4 per cent, Deora said the benefit would not be passed on to consumers as the reduction would only cut down the losses incurred by oil marketing companies. |
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