Private refiners may back out selling fuel to PSUs if pricing model changes

18 Mar 2013 Evaluate

Private oil refiners may not sell any fuel to state-owned oil firms if the government changes the way for pricing petrol and diesel to export parity price. Private refiners like Essar and Reliance supply one-fifth of diesel that Indian Oil Corp, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum sell through their petrol pumps.

The government wants the refiners to charge petrol and diesel at a rate that they get in export market, rather than current practice of pricing the fuels after adding transportation and customs duty to the international price as the duty was adding to the under-recoveries of the state-run oil marketing companies without contributing any revenue to the exchequer.

Though, the government’s move would save Rs 18,000 crore from subsidy bills, but it will hit hard the public sector oil firms who are short in diesel and LPG production capacity and will be left with only alternative to import the fuel to meet domestic demand. They are of the view that export parity price of fuel will lower their profit and if they are to get export parity price, they might move to overseas market to sell the fuel by setting up an export-oriented unit (EOU) or a SEZ refinery and avail of tax benefits like 7-year holiday on payment of income tax and duty free imports and exemption from payment of excise duty.

Oil Minister M V Moily has already raised concerns about this finance ministry's move as the oil marketing companies have not been adding any margin on crude oil or on petroleum products from 2005-06, they get compensated for the loss on selling diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene at controlled rates. If the actual losses are not compensated they won’t get money and can’t go for any expansion.

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