By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Steel Dharmendra Pradhan in the LokSabha in a written reply on Saturday said during 2019-20, consumption of petroleum products was 213.7 MMT and percentage of import dependency of oil and oil equivalent gas was 77.9%.Currently, the Central Government levies Excise duty on petrol and diesel, whereas State Governments levy VAT/Sales Tax. Excise duty is levied on specific basis (fixed amount per litre) and VAT/Sales tax (by most of the states) is levied on an ad-valorem basis.
Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has identified a basket of strategies inter-alia including primarily increasing domestic production of oil and gas and promoting biofuels/alternate fuels with a view to achieve reduction in import of crude oil.Government has also taken a number of initiatives to encourage the use of alternative fuels like ethanol and bio-diesel through Ethanol Blending in Petrol (EBP) Programme and Bio-diesel blending in diesel. Government has formulated a National Bio Fuel Policy 2018 to boost availability of biofuels in country. To give a major thrust to Ethanol Blending Programme, Oil CPSEs are establishing twelve 2G Ethanol plants across 11 States of the country.
As per resolution dated 08.11.2019 regarding authorization to market transportation fuel, the authorized entities, in addition to conventional fuels, are required to install facilities for marketing at least one new generation alternate fuels like Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), bio-fuels, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), electric vehicle charging points etc. at their proposed retail outlets (RO) within three years of operationalization of the said outlet subject to the entity complying with various other statutory guidelines. Also, as on 31.08.2020, PSU Oil Marketing Companies have set up Electric Charging facilities at 110 retail outlets and Battery Swapping Stations at 17 retail outlets in the country.
