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The payment of gas subsidy by state-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) has plummeted to Rs 2,706 crore for the first nine months of FY22, from Rs 37,585 crore in FY19, an RTI query has revealed.
The query was filed by Nagpur resident Abhay Kolarkar, who sought information from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas pertaining to subsidy provided to domestic gas consumers in the last five years.
The subsidy burden on the government has reduced as it kept on increasing the retail prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) which is used by over 39 crore homes for cooking, even as the global oil and gas prices showed a decline. This has been seen as an attempt at decontrolling prices of the fuel, in line with similar moves on petrol and diesel.
The RTI reply revealed that in 2018-19, three state-run OMCs paid Rs 37,585 crore as subsidy, which came down to only Rs 2,706 crore in FY22 till December, Kolarkar told PTI.
Kolarkar added that the price of a cylinder has increased by around 100 per cent in the last five years and the government has reduced the subsidy on gas.
At present the cost of a cylinder is around Rs 900, but subsidy paid is Rs 40.10 only. He sought immediate restoration of subsidies as a percentage of the total cost to help lessen the burden on the common man.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the largest of the OMCs, said its customers were given a subsidy of Rs 12,371 crore 2017-18, Rs 18,663 crore in 2018-19, Rs 13,048 crore in 2019-20, Rs 3,350 crore in 2020-21 and only Rs 1,369 crore in 2021-22 (April-Dec 2021).
Similarly, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) customers were provided with a subsidy of Rs 5,963 crore in 2017-18, Rs 9,337 crore in 2018-19, Rs 6,572 crore in 2019-20, Rs 1,726 crore in 2020-21 and Rs 716 crores in 2021-22.
Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) customers saw a decline as well, starting from Rs 6,068 crore in 2017-18, Rs 9,585 crore in 2018-19, Rs 6,588 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 621 crore 2021-22.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
