NOC hikes POL prices

Citing its mounting losses, the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) Wednesday hiked the prices of petroleum products.

The NOC increased the price of petrol by 6 rupees per litre, diesel by 2 rupees and kerosene by 3 rupees per litre and LP gas by 200 rupees per cylinder.

The new retail price of per litre of petrol, diesel and kerosene has been fixed at 73 rupees, 56.86 rupees and 51 rupees respectively while a LPG cylinder will cost 1100 rupees.

The NOC said the revision in POL prices would be effective from today midnight.

NOC managing director Digambar Jha described the price hike as “minimum possible hike”. He said the hike was inevitable in view of the continuous loss the NOC has had to cope with.

“The price of oil in the international market has jumped from about USD 63 to USD 83 per barrel in the last 4-5 years and the NOC’s debt has crossed 13 billion rupees by now,” he said. “Despite the increase in the prices, NOC will still be facing a loss of around 60 million rupees a month,” he added.

He claimed that the hike would normalise the supply of petroleum products. “There will be full supply from tomorrow. I am sure there’s won’t be queues in gas stations anymore,” he said.

The price hike came as soon as the Dashain festival was over. The country had been grappling with petroleum shortage for the past several months due to significant cuts in supply by the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) citing the failure of the NOC to clear the outstanding dues.

Last year, the government was forced to withdraw its decision to hike the POL prices in the wake of street protests. nepalnews.com mk Oct 24 07

Was long overdue. Now needs the deregulation. The regulation is reaching the height of absurdity.

Nepe

Deregulation is ok but monitoring is very weak. It will now go to the hand of Marwadis!!!

Copicat-jyu,

 

Marwaris are humans too. They have every right to make money; LEGIT money, that is. So I think you rightly pointed out the importance of “monitoring”. I would only add that both systematic check (anti-trust) and operational control and ethics (monitoring, corporate citizenry) are important.

 

If it was about skepticism regarding the broad notion of “privatization”, I have gone though a similar questioning, if not skepticism, after learning that some four big industries of Nepal collapsed right after they were privatized (I used to be and largely still am a firm believer of the bible of free market and privatization !).

 

Anecdotally, I had a chance to put this question in an economic forum to the attending government officials and industrialists.

 

One industrialist, incidentally a Marwari, was of the opinion that despite a few cases of failures, privatization is an overall successes story in Nepal. I asked for the data on exact success rate which he could not produce at that moment. Regarding the failure of some privatized businesses, he put the blame on some “mistakes” on part of the government during the handover of the businesses.

 

I had also asked him if PPP (Public Private Partnership) model could be suitable or worth experimenting in Nepal. He did not have a definite answer to that.

 

Overall, I feel that a mixture of PPP and Privatization might turn out to be the best model for Nepal, not only for economic but also for contemporary political reality of Nepal.

 

Nepe

 

comon guys we're talkin about Nepal here............the core leader of corruption and abuse of power and resources as a coutry lead by Criminals and Thugs. As much as I would love to see good about this issue..........I step back and realize its just another stunt to rob the poor. The rich and crimelords will benifit and the regular joe will suffer...thats has been the sad story of our country...and it gets worse by the minute...another reason to create instability in the country by politicians...............to anger the majority poor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

copicat is copycat of copycat.
damn... unique नाम राख्न नदिने भए बा।