FinMin seeks export parity pricing of diesel

29 Jan 2013 Evaluate

In a move to contain the fiscal deficit for the current fiscal, the finance ministry wants to change the way petrol and diesel are priced by excluding the element of import duties to save about Rs 18,000 crore in subsidy bills. However, this move by the government will hit oil PSUs hard. Further, the finance ministry has informed the petroleum ministry that auto fuel need to be priced at export parity rather than import parity as the 2.5% customs duty was adding to the under-recoveries of the state-run oil marketing companies without contributing any revenue to the exchequer.

The finance ministry wants to cut its cash outgo by about Rs 18,000 crore in the current fiscal by changing the pricing methodology for calculating the under-recoveries. The imported price of petrol and diesel, which includes customs duty, is used by the refineries to calculate the prices charged from retailers.

Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum together are projected to end the fiscal with close to Rs 1,60,000 crore of under-recoveries or revenue loss on selling diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene below cost. Further, the upstream oil companies like ONGC are to meet about Rs 60,000 crore of this and the rest Rs 100,000 crore was to come from the government as cash subsidy.

Meanwhile, the government had deregulated the petrol prices and diesel continues to be subsidised. There is no import duty on kerosene and LPG, the other two subsidized fuel. At 2.5 per cent, its net effect is an increase of Rs 1.13 per litre on the ex-refinery price of diesel. This translates into an under-recovery of Rs 18,000 crore. On petrol, the customs duty impact is about Re 1 but it is passed on to the consumers and there is no impact of government's subsidy bill.

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