The Centre has to pay over Rs 1.70 lakh crore towards principal and interest to oil marketing companies for oil subsidies during the UPA regime, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Monday almost ruling out any excise duty cut on petrol and diesel in the near future.
She said this was on the top of Rs 60,000 crore the NDA government has already paid to oil marketing companies in the past six years.
Sitharaman, however, said the government has been taking supply-side measures to check the overall rise in prices.
“The liabilities of the previous government are so huge that it will take us three-four years more to pay them all. There are over Rs 1.30 lakh crore towards principle on oil bonds issued during the UPA regime and over Rs 37,000 crore towards the interest on the same,” she told a group of reporters in her interaction here.
"If I did not have the burden to service the oil bonds, I would have been in a position to reduce excise duty on fuel," she said.
Oil bonds were issued in place of cash subsidy in favour of oil marketing companies — Indian Oil Corporation, HPCL and BPCL in the UPA regime. These allowed the oil companies to raise immediate cash at the time. The government bore the interest payments and redemption at maturity. This helped oil marketing companies to sell transport fuels at lower than international market prices to keep it affordable. The government compensated part of that but the rest fell over the current dispensation as the bonds were issued for a long tenure of 15-20 years.
In reply to another question, Sitharaman said technical glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal should be fied in the coming.
"I have been reminding Infosys (the vendor which developed the new portal) constantly, and (Infosys head) Nandan Nilekani has been messaging me with assurances that they will sort it out," she said.
(Published 16 August 2021, 13:14 IST)
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