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If your booked subsidised LPG cylinder has not reached you before March 31, then you stand to lose out on your remaining quota for this fiscal. The quota will not be carried forward, say public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs), irrespective of when the refill booking was done.
A senior executive of an oil company said the quota for subsidised domestic LPG cylinders will be determined based on the delivery date and not the date of refill booking. In other words, irrespective of when the cylinder was booked, the actual date of delivery of the cylinder would determine the period for which it would be accounted for.
Almost 4-4.5 per cent households may not have availed themselves of their entire quota of five subsidised LPG cylinders, the deadline for which ends on March 31. The oil companies serve around 15 crore customers and deliver over 100 crore cylinders annually across the country.
A Delhi-based distributor said many consumers would book their subsidised cylinder on March 30 and 31. But, the delivery may not happen before April 1 or 2 — beginning of the new fiscal. Therefore, even though the booking would have been made in the last fiscal, the first subsidised cylinder would be counted as part of the quota of nine for the new fiscal.
Another distributor said it would be difficult to explain this to the consumer. A subsidised cylinder is being sold at Rs 410.50 in Delhi, while the market rates are Rs 904.50.
The LPG dealers, however, fear that the huge backlog of refills will remain as the fiscal year will end on Sunday, which is a holiday. Besides, March 27 and 29 were also public holidays.
However, oil companies said their bottling plants and distributor offices would be open during holidays and weekends to clear the backlog.
On January 17, the Government had decided to increase the entitlement of subsidised domestic LPG cylinders till March 2013, from three to five cylinders. For fiscal 2013-14, the entitlement of subsidised domestic LPG cylinder has been increased from six to nine.
According to an estimate the three public sector OMCs, based on the previous year’s consumption data, only 10 per cent of cylinders will be sold at market price at the current cap of nine. This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Panabaaka Lakshmi, to the Lok Sabha recently.
This translates into saving fiscal subsidy and under-recoveries on around 9.2 crore cylinders at the rate of Rs 461.58/domestic subsidised cylinders with effect from March 1, 2013, the Minister said.
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