Neeraj Mittal, Joint Secretary (Marketing), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, on Wednesday said there was no scarcity of domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the country and clarified that the Ministry had not issued directions to oil marketing companies (OMCs) not to book a refill within 21 days of the last delivery.
Addressing presspersons here, Mr. Mittal said earlier, domestic LPG stocks were available for 10 days. Now, the stocks were available for 14 days, he said.
Mr. Mittal said the consumption rate of domestic LPG had declined with the Ministry checking diversion of domestic LPG for other purposes. The consumption rate, which was around 16 to 17 per cent (excluding peak winter season), had declined to 3 to 4 per cent. This could be attributed to various reasons, including transparency portal, removal of ghost, duplicate and multiple connections, he explained.
The Joint Secretary said there were about 2.5crore suspected multiple domestic LPG connections in the country. “We had asked consumers to establish their identity for the connections. We stopped supply to nearly 80 lakh connections after the consumers did not provide proof. The Ministry saved about Rs. 3,000-crore subsidy with this action,” he said.
He said the cap on domestic LPG cylinders had also made a difference.
