Ministers to Meet on Feb 14 to Discuss Fuel Pricing, Subsidy
India’s finance and oil ministers are going to meet on February 14 for discussing fuel pricing and subsidies, said a senior government official refusing to be named, according to media reports.
“We will discuss fuel pricing and if there is a need to raise prices, then to what extent and how much to be raised for which product,” he was quoted as saying.
It may be mentioned that the government is already concerned about the rising oil subsidy bill but hiking up fuel prices will lead to inflation.
Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora had said on Wednesday that his ministry would submit its recommendations on fuel prices to the cabinet on the same day.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been maintaining that the Centre cannot dig the hole any deeper on abandoning pretroleum price controls, told his party leaders that something needed to be immediately done to fix the economy soaked in oil subsidy.
However, his intervention too failed to get UPA allies on board. The Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee told him that her party was not comfortable with the idea.
Sensing that the decision to sit on the Parikh panel recommendations is a bad advertisement for the regime, government leaders said the prime minister will not delay a decision, said report.
“A revision that gets the government halfway ther, or even one-tenth of the way, or one-twentieth, will signal a commitment to tackling the subsidy issue,” a government leader was quoted as saying.
