The authorities has restricted subsidy on cooking gasoline LPG for less than 9 crore poor ladies and different beneficiaries who received free connections underneath the Ujjwala scheme and the remaining customers together with households pays the market worth.
Oil Secretary Pankaj Jain at a information briefing stated no subsidy is paid on cooking gasoline since June 2020 and the one subsidy that’s offered is the one which Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced on March 21.
“There was no subsidy for LPG users since the early days of Covid. Since then the only subsidy is one which had been introduced now for Ujjwala beneficiaries,” he stated.
Sitharaman had whereas asserting a minimize in excise responsibility on petrol by a report Rs 8 per litre and that on diesel by Rs 6, said that Ujjwala scheme beneficiaries will get Rs 200 per cylinder subsidy for 12 bottles in a 12 months to assist ease among the burden arising from cooking gasoline charges rising to report ranges.
A 14.2-kg LPG cylinder prices Rs 1,003 within the nationwide capital. Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries will get Rs 200 subsidy instantly of their checking account and the efficient worth for them can be Rs 803 per 14.2-kg cylinder.
For the remaining, it should value Rs 1,003 in Delhi.
The Rs 200 subsidy will value the federal government Rs 6,100 crore, she had stated.
“Subsidies by definition are not designed to get entrenched and increased. Subsidies by definition have to be degressive,” Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri stated on the identical convention.
The authorities ended subsidies on petrol in June 2010 and on diesel in November 2014. The identical on kerosene ended a few years later. And now subsidies on LPG for many have successfully been ended. However, not like petrol, diesel and kerosene, there isn’t any formal order ending the subsidies.
The nation has almost 30.5 crore LPG connections. Of this, 9 crore have been offered underneath PM Ujjwala Yojana.
On costs, Puri stated the charges of “LPG for domestic consumers have gone up by just 7 per cent in last 6 months whereas the Saudi CP (the benchmark used to price LPG) has gone up by 43 per cent. This is the reality.” Non-subsidised or market priced LPG, which most customers apart from Ujjwala pay, have gone up by Rs 103.50 per 14.2-kg cylinder since October 2021 and by virtually Rs 200 in a single 12 months.
A 14.2-kg LPG cylinder was priced at Rs 809 in June 2021. Its costs have been raised by about Rs 90 within the subsequent 4 months. Prices have been hiked by Rs 50 per cylinder in March after which once more in May, charges went up by Rs 3.50. “We have been, thanks to sound policies, insulating our users from the tremors in the international market and the turmoil,” Puri stated referring to the rise in charges in Saudi CP and those in India.
He additionally refuted experiences of a drop within the buy of refills by Ujjwala beneficiaries as soon as they exhaust their first cylinder submit getting free connections. This was attributed to the excessive costs of LPG.
“It is completely untrue,” he stated.
Users taking just one refill has come down from 181 crore throughout 2019-20 to 1.08 crore in 2021-22 and a majority of consumers have taken a couple of refill.
Also, the per capita consumption of Ujjwala customers has elevated from 3.01 to three.68 cylinders throughout 2021-22.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”