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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Diesel prices should be decontrolled

Diesel prices should be decontrolled

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published Published on Apr 9, 2012   modified Modified on Apr 9, 2012
-The Economic Times

Repressed, unrevised retail prices by fiat have led to rising diesel consumption nationwide, thoroughly misallocating resources and recklessly fretting away scarce budgetary funds in the bargain. The government needs to promptly decontrol diesel prices and put paid to open-ended oil consumption subsidies, as it has rightly proposed to in the Union Budget. 

Further dither and non-decision would wreak havoc in government finances and hook the fiscal deficit figure over the boundary for a dubious six. Reportedly, the consumption of diesel, by far the most used petroleum product, grew a breakneck 11.9% in February: far higher than the overall increase in economic output. Industries are now coolly burning diesel in place of fuel oil because it is artificially cheaper to do so thanks to warped policy! Diesel consumption grew at a sedate 5.1%, during 2002-09, as per the Kirit Parikh committee report. The jack-up in the trend rate of diesel consumption even as retail prices remain unrevised would be at huge national cost. 

It would add to the ballooning under-recoveries, the difference between notional cost and realised prices of the trio of public sector oil marketing companies. A big chunk of the deficit would need to be squared with budgetary funds, raised through borrowing, raising the fiscal deficit and putting upward pressure on interest rates. 

In tandem, the subsidy regime implies that the oil companies would need to make large unscheduled market borrowings, which given the volumes in oil would, likewise, only add to liquidity pressures and rev up the cost of funds for all and sundry. In the process, private sector efficiency in marketing and distribution is squeezed out of the entire oil sector, which now accounts for over a tenth of all value-added economy-wide. 

What we get instead is much opacity, the lack of efficiency prices in oil and continuing high inflationary expectations. Further, the rising trend in diesel demand almost certainly calls for added capital-intensive refining capacity. Hence the pressing need to decontrol diesel, restrain consumption and expressly economise on oil usage.

The Economic Times, 9 April, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/diesel-prices-should-be-decontrolled/articleshow/12588249.cms


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