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Rise in LPG cap unlikely for now

[email protected] (DHNS)
January 6, 2013

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New Delhi, Jan 6: Domestic consumers may have to wait longer for the cap on subsidised LPG cylinders to be raised from six to nine. The Petroleum Ministry has been pressing for a relaxation, but the Finance Ministry has expressed serious reservations.

“Lack of revenue and a wide fiscal deficit may not make it possible this year to extend such subsidies,” a senior official in the Finance Ministry said. He, however, added that after this year’s Budget is presented, some provisions may be made by adjusting the flow of funds.

An additional Rs 3,000 crore will be needed to provide households with nine subsidised cylinders every year. The government is not willing to burden the exchequer any further. This was the reason behind the Petroleum Ministry not preparing a Cabinet note regarding the matter, sources told Deccan Herald.

Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily, in a premature statement ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections, had said the government may raise the cap.

The government is already in a tight spot after allocating funds for social sector programmes, including flagship schemes like the MGNREGS and the direct cash transfer. In fact, the Finance Ministry never favoured raising the cap to nine cylinders. Moily had discussed the issue with Finance Minister P Chidambaram, but to no avail.

The Finance Ministry had contended that the whole purpose of capping subsidised cylinders will be defeated if the government goes with relaxing the restriction. The exchequer has to shell out Rs 35,000 crore towards cooking gas subsidy in 2012-13.

Besides, the Finance Ministry also suggested the Petroleum Ministry to reduce the gap between the four different price categories of LPG cylinders - subsidised cylinder, additional refills that a household may buy beyond the six cylinders, cylinders used by charitable and other institutions and commercial use, like in hotels.

According to the finance ministry, a wide gap in price of these four categories has led to the misuse of subsidised refills.

Sources said the petroleum ministry is trying to find a middle path to tackle the problem. They added that the ministry has proposed a different rate structure for bulk buyers of diesel like the Railways, defence and public and private sector companies. It has proposed some cut in diesel subsidy for these organisations, which account for close to 20 per cent of the total diesel consumption. The proposal, if implemented, can save the exchequer close to Rs 15,000 crore every year, which can in turn be diverted to raise the LPG cap.

However, lifting the subsidy on diesel for the Railways will culminate in an unusual hike in passenger fares in the next Budget, which can draw flak from political opponents.

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News Network
June 13,2020

Visakhapatnam, Jun 13: A four-month-old baby who was on ventilator treatment for 18 days for COVID-19 was on Friday evening discharged from hospital after testing negative.

"A tribal woman of East Godavari named Laxmi was infected with COVID-19 in May, later the doctors confirmed that her four-month-old baby was also infected," said District Collector, Vinay Chand.

"The baby was shifted to Visakhapatnam VIMS hospital on May 25. She was treated for 18 days on a ventilator. Doctors again conducted baby's COVID-19 test recently, following which the reports came negative. After a health check-up, VIMS doctors discharged the baby on Friday evening," he added.

Meanwhile, 14 new COVID-19 positive cases have been reported in Visakhapatnam district on Friday, taking the total number of cases to 252 including one fatality due to the virus.

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Bloomberg
July 27,2020

New Delhi, Jul 27: India’s coronavirus epidemic is now growing at the fastest in the world, increasing 20% over the last week to more than 14 lakh confirmed cases, according to Bloomberg’s Coronavirus Tracker.

Infections in the South Asian nation of 130 crore people have reached 14.3 lakh, including 32,771 deaths, India’s health ministry said, with daily cases close to a record 50,000 on Monday. India is only trailing the US and Brazil now in the number of confirmed infections, but its growth in new cases is the fastest.

Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are among the states where the maximum number of daily cares are being reported. The world’s second-most populous country has been ramping up testing, with 515,472 samples taken on Sunday, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Still, India and Brazil have some of the world’s lowest testing rates, with 11.8 tests and 11.93 tests per 1,000 people respectively, compared to the US with 152.98 tests per 1,000 and Russia with 184.34, according to Our World in Data, a project based at the University of Oxford in the UK.

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News Network
February 28,2020

Feb 28: The best economic tonic for the coronavirus shock is to contain its spread and worry about stimulus later, said Raghuram Rajan, former head of the Reserve Bank of India.

There’s little central banks can do, and while more government spending would help, the priority should be on convincing companies and households that the virus is under control, he said.

“People want to have a sense that there is a limit to the spread of this virus perhaps because of containment measures or because there is hope that some kind of viral solution can be found,” Rajan told Bloomberg Television’s Haidi Stroud Watts and Shery Ahn.

“At this point I would say the best thing that governments can do is to really fight the epidemic rather than worry about stimulus measures that comes later,” said Rajan, who is currently a professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business.

The spread of coronavirus is pushing the world economy toward its worst performance since the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

Bank of America Corp. economists warned clients Thursday that they now expect 2.8% global growth this year, the weakest since 2009.

“We have moved from extreme confidence in markets to extreme panic, all in the space of one week,” said Rajan, who previously was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The virus outbreak will force companies to rethink supply chains and overseas production facilities, he said.

“I think we will see a lot of rethinking on this, coming on the back of the trade disruption, now we have this,” Rajan said. “Globalization in production is going to be hit quite badly.”

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