State-run Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) today sold oil bonds worth Rs 95 crore under the Reserve Bank's Special Market Operation scheme (SMO) to fund its purchase of crude oil.
"We've sold Rs 95 crore worth of bonds today. We've been selling to the RBI from time-to-time as per our liquidity requirements. The bonds carried a coupon rate of 6.35 per cent and would be redeemable in 2024," a BPCL official said.
The country's second largest PSU refiner had last week sold Rs 99 crore of bonds under the same scheme, the official said.
"We spend about Rs 1,000 crore every month to purchase crude oil. These were paid against the dollar requirement of our crude purchase," he said.
BPCL purchases crude from domestic explorers like state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp's Mumbai high fields, as well as imports the feedstock for its refineries.
The three state-run retailers - Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum - are given oil bonds by the government to compensate them for about half the losses they incur by selling petrol, diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene at subsidised rates.
