Indian government will not deregulate prices of diesel, cooking gas and kerosene

Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural gas R. P. N. Singh said that the Indian government has no plans of deregulating diesel fuel, cooking gas and kerosene prices. “At present, there is no such proposal,” the minister said, responding to a question in Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, on whether the government plans to deregulate these three petroleum products.
Singh explained that the government is providing a subsidy of Rs0.82 (US$0.02) on every liter of public distribution system (PDS) kerosene and Rs22.58 (US$0.43) for every 14.2 kg of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder sold. The subsidies come from the financial budget under the PDS Kerosene and Domestic LPG Subsidy Scheme, 2002.
Added to these, the state-owned oil marketing firms incur under-recoveries on the sale of these three products because their prices are controlled by the government. The three public sector oil retailers, Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (HPCL) continue to lose about Rs4.5 billion (US$84.8 million) daily on their sale. (August 22, 2012)