Efforts being made to make fuel available at ‘affordable prices’: Hardeep Singh Puri

New Delhi: "The prices of LNG in the international market has gone up by ''more than 37 percent'' if compared from April 2021 to February 2022, because of ''an unsettled condition and military action in one part of the world following the COVID crisis, whereas, our increase at the bunk has been only five per cent,'' union Minister for Oil & Gas Hardeep Singh Puri told the parliament on Thursday. He was responding to a question in Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

As far as the LPG price, which are based on Saudi CP (Contract Price), is concerned, it has gone up by 285 per cent from April 2020 to March 2022, and the hike has been 37 percent the last six months alone, he said. "So, I just want to place these facts before the members and this August House, so that they understand what the international situation today is," Puri said.

In spite of all that, the government is making ''every effort to make sure that the consumer at the point of consumption gets fuel at an affordable price'', the minister added.

He said that it has always been the government's endeavour to make available CNG at ''good affordable price'' to consumers. ''But, there is no reduction in taxes,'' Congress MP Shashi Tharoor pointed out as he rose to ask a question soon after Puri answered the question of a BJP member.

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