New Delhi
The price of CNG has shot up by nearly 38 per cent while the price of an LPG cylinder increased by about 22 per cent in Delhi during the period of last one year.
The comparative prices of CNG for Indraprastha Gas Limited (Delhi) were at Rs 57.01 per kg on March 1, 2022 and it increased to Rs 79.56 per kg on March 1 this year.
Similarly, the price of a LPG cylinder (14.4 kg) was at Rs 899.50 on March 1, 2022 and it went up to Rs 1,103 by March 1.
India imports more than 60 per cent of its domestic LPG consumption.
The average Saudi Contract Prices (CP) on which the domestic LPG prices are based, increased from $454/MT to $693/MT during 2019-20 to 2021-22.
During 2022-23, the Saudi CP has further risen to 790/MT for February 2023. The government however continues to modulate the effective price of domestic LPG.
Public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) have suffered huge losses on sale of domestic LPG.
To compensate these losses, the government has recently paid a one-time compensation of Rs 22,000 crore to OMCs, said the Ministry of Petroleum in a written reply in Lok Sabha on Thursday.
The Ministry in its reply said the government has started a targeted subsidy of Rs 200 per 14.2 kg cylinder for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries for up to 12 refills for year 2022-23.
"The government has taken various initiatives to keep natural gas prices under check. While the gas prices at the international gas indices (JKM) have increased by up to 228 per cent between January 2021 and February 2023, in India, the CNG price rise (Delhi representative market) was restricted to about 83 per cent," said the reply.
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