Coming to the aid of bleeding public sector oil marketing companies, the Government will bear an additional subsidy burden of Rs 38,500 crore for fiscal 2011-12. With this, the three companies — Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation — can close their accounts for 2011-12 with some respite.
This will take the total subsidy burden shouldered by the Government for compensating these companies for selling petroleum products below the market price to Rs 83,500 crore (Rs 45,000 crore given for the nine months of 2011-12) for the last fiscal.
With this, the Government has borne almost 60 per cent of the total under recoveries of Rs 1,38,500 crore incurred by the oil marketing companies.
The Finance Ministry has agreed to give Rs 38,500 crore to offset a portion of losses incurred by the marketing companies during the fourth quarter of 2011-12. This, however, is lower than Rs 49,000 crore which the Petroleum Ministry was seeking for the quarter.
Of this, Indian Oil Corporation will get Rs 20,861 crore, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation get Rs 8,486 crore, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Rs 9,153 crore.
Besides this, upstream oil companies – ONGC, Oil India – and GAIL (India) will shoulder a burden of Rs 55,000 crore for the fiscal. These companies have already provided Rs 36,894 crore towards fuel subsidy and for the fourth quarter they will provide another Rs 18,106 crore.
Of this Rs 55,000 crore, Indian Oil Corporation will get Rs 29,961 crore, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Rs 12,951 crore and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Rs 12,082 crore.
On the total under recoveries incurred by oil marketing companies, the upstream share works out to be 39.7 per cent in 2011-12 up from 36.75 in the previous year.
richam@thehindu.co.in