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Levy windfall tax on oil firms, says CITU

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has sought imposition of a “windfall tax” on “super-profits” being earned by the private sector petroleum industry.

This comes in the wake of the Union Petroleum Ministry’s recommendation to the government to hike the prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas following an increase in the prices of crude oil in the international market.

Letter to PM

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, CITU president M.K. Pandhe has said the government should “impose windfall tax on the super profits earned by the private sector petroleum industry, engaged in both exploration and refining business.”

Past profits

Quoting Senator Patrick J. Leahy, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary, as saying, “we look at the past profits of oil companies and what they’re making on previously discovered oil; oil that was very profitable for them at $55 to $65 a barrel is obviously making them windfall profits at $130 a barrel.”

He also quoted Senator Richard Durbin as saying that the “difference in cost of crude and refining it into the finished product was one or two dollars a gallon not long ago.”

Mr. Pandhe told the Prime Minister that he would agree that if the U.S. Senate Committee could call for a control on the super profit of private oil giants in the land of the so-called free market economy, there was no reason why India with millions of people below poverty line could not curb such super profits earned by foreign and domestic private oil companies on Indian soil.

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