Why the Price of Petrol is Racing Towards Rs 100 Per Litre

If there are two things that get people of this country interested in economics, they are the price of onion and the price of petrol racing towards Rs 100 per kg or litre, respectively.  Currently, the price of petrol is racing towards Rs 100 per litre in large parts of the country. In fact, in some parts, it has already crossed that level.

So, what’s happening here? Let’s take a look at this pointwise.

1) Take a look at the following chart, which plots the average price of the Indian basket of crude oil since January 2020.

Source: Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell.
*February price as of February 18, 2021.

What does the above chart tell us? It tells us that as the covid pandemic spread, the price of oil fell, falling to a low of $19.90 per barrel in April 2020. It has been rising since then. One simple reason for this lies in the fact that as the global economy recovers, its energy needs will go up accordingly and hence, the price of oil is going up as well.

The other reason has been the massive amount of money that Western central banks have printed through the beginning of 2020. Oil, as it had post 2008, has emerged as a hard asset of investment for many institutional and high-networth investors, leading to an increase in its price. As of February 18, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil stood at $63.65 per barrel, having risen by close to 220% during the current financial year.

2) Now let’s look at the average price of the Indian basket of crude oil over the years.

Source: Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell.
* Up to January 2021.

What does the above chart tell us? It tells us that the Narendra Modi government has been very lucky when it comes to the price of oil, with the oil price on the whole being much lower than it was between 2009 and 2014.

In May 2014, when Modi took over as the prime minister, the price of oil averaged at $106.85 per barrel. By January 2016, it had fallen to $28.08 per barrel.

Even after that, the price of oil hasn’t touched the high levels it did before 2014, in the post financial crisis years, which also happened to be the second term of the Manmohan Singh government.

A major reason for this lies in the discovery of shale oil in the United States. In fact, as Daniel Yergin writes in The New Map – Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations: “In the autumn of 2018, though it was hardly noted at the time, something historic occurred: The United States overtook both Russia and Saudi Arabia to regain its rank as the world’s largest oil producer, a position it had lost more than four decades earlier.” This has been a major reason in the lower price of oil over a longer term.

The question that then crops up is why hasn’t petrol price in India seen low levels? The answer lies in the fact that between 2014 and 2021, the taxes on petrol, in particular central government taxes have gone up dramatically.

In short, the central government has captured a bulk of the fall in oil prices. Now when the oil price has gone up over the course of this financial year, the high-price of petrol has started to pinch.

3) Take a look at the following table. It plots the price of petrol in Delhi as of February 16, 2021 and in March 2014.

Source: https://iocl.com/uploads/priceBuildup/PriceBuildup_petrol_Delhi_as_on_16_Feb-2021.pdf
and https://www.ppac.gov.in/WriteReadData/Reports/201409231239065062686Snapshot_IOGD_MAR.pdf.

The above table makes for a very interesting reading. As of February 16, the price of petrol charged to dealers was Rs 32.1. Over and above this, the central government charged an excise duty of Rs 32.90 per litre on petrol. Add to this a dealer commission of Rs 3.68 per litre, and we are looking at a total of Rs 68.68 per litre.

On this the Delhi state government charged a value added tax of 30% or Rs 20.61 per litre. This leads to a retail price of petrol of Rs 89.29 per litre. Given that the state government charges a tax in percentage terms, the higher the price of petrol goes, the more tax the state government earns. The vice versa is also true.

Let’s compare this to how things were in March 2014. The price of petrol charged to dealers was Rs 47.13 per litre, much lower than it is today. On this, the central government’s tax amounted to Rs 10.38 per litre. The dealer commission was Rs 2 per litre.

Adding all of this up, we got a total of Rs 59.51 per litre. On this, the Delhi state government charged a value added tax of 20%, which amounted to Rs 11.9 per litre and a retail selling price of petrol of Rs 71.41 per litre. Interestingly, the state government’s tax was more than that of the central government at that point of time.

4) The above calculations explain almost everything. In March 2014, the price of petrol at the dealer level was higher than it is now, but the retail selling price was lower. Both the central government and the state government have raised taxes since then.

The total taxes as a percentage of dealer price now works out to 167% of the dealer price. In March 2014, they were at 47.3%. It is these high taxes which also explain why petrol prices in India are higher than in many other countries.

Of course, a bulk of this raise has come due to a rise in taxes charged by the central government. As mentioned earlier, the central government has captured a bulk of the fall in price of oil.

5) The calculation shown here will vary from state to state, depending on the value added tax or sales tax charged by the state government and the price at which petrol is sold to the dealers. States which charge a higher value added tax than Delhi will see the price of petrol reaching Rs 100 per litre faster than Delhi, if the price of oil continues to rise.

6) Of course, the governments can bring down the price of petrol by cutting taxes. In fact, four state governments have cut taxes providing some relief to oil consumers. But any substantial relief can be provided only by the central government. The trouble is that tax collections have fallen this year. Only the collection of excise duty has gone up by 54% to Rs 2.39 lakh crore, thanks to the higher excise duty charged on petrol and diesel.

The interesting thing is that the excise duty earned from the petroleum sector has jumped from Rs 99,068 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 2.23 lakh crore in 2019-20. The government has become addicted to easy revenue from taxing petrol and diesel. This year its earnings will be even higher than in 2019-20.

7) The central government also fears that if it cuts the excise duty on petrol and diesel, the state governments can step in and increase their value added tax, given that like the centre, they are also struggling to earn taxes this year.

Also, what needs to be kept in mind here is that the central government doesn’t share a good bit of what it earns through the excise duty on petrol and diesel with the states. This is because a bulk of the excise duty is charged in the form of a cess, which the central government does not need to share with the states.

Let’s take the overall excise duty of Rs 32.90 per litre of petrol currently. Of this, the basic excise duty is Rs 1.40 per litre and the special additional excise duty is at Rs 11 per litre. The road and infrastructure cess is at Rs 18 per litre (also referred to as additional excise duty) and the agriculture and infrastructure development cess is at Rs 2.50 litre. Clearly, the cess has a heavier weight in the overall excise duty.

8) One reason offered for the high price of petrol is low atmanirbharta or that as a country we have to import more and more oil than we did in the past. In 2011-12, the import dependency was 75.9%. This jumped to 77.6% in 2013-14 and has been rising since. In April to December 2020, this has jumped to 85%.

The explanation offered on this has been that oil companies haven’t carried out enough exploration activities in the past. Let’s take a look at the numbers of ONGC, the government’s biggest oil production company (or upstream oil company, as it is technically referred to).

The total amount of money spent by the company on digging exploratory wells in 2019-20 stood at Rs 4,330.6 crore. This had stood at Rs 11,687.2 crore in 2013-14. Over the years, the amount of money spent by ONGC on exploration has come down dramatically. This explains to some extent why the crude oil production in India has fallen from 37.8 million tonnes in 2013-14 to 30.5 million tonnes in 2019-20, leading to a higher import dependency.

Of course, not all exploration leads to discovery of oil, nevertheless, at the same time unless you explore, how do you find oil.

The reason why ONGC’s spending on exploration has fallen is primarily because the company has taken on a whole lot of debt over the past few years to finance the acquisition of HPCL and a majority stake in Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation’s (GSPC) KG Basin gas block. The money that ONGC borrowed to finance the purchase of HPCL from the government was used by the government to finance the fiscal deficit. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a company earns and what it spends.

The borrowing has led to the finance costs of the company going up from Rs 0.4 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 2,823.7 crore in 2019-20. The cash reserves of the company are down to Rs 968.2 crore as of March 2020 from Rs 10,798.9 crore as of March 2014.

All this explains why the price of petrol is racing towards Rs 100 per litre. At the cost of sounding very very very cliched, there is no free lunch in economics. Somebody’s got to bear the cost.

It will be interesting to see if the central government continues to hold on to the high excise duty on petrol and diesel (whatever I have said for petrol applies for diesel as well, with a different set of numbers) leading to  a high petrol and diesel price and lets these high rates feed into inflation in the process.

Keep watching this space.

Narendra Modi and the Oil Lottery

light-diesel-oil-250x250

Three weeks ago, the Narendra Modi government completed three years in office. On the occasion, the media went to town discussing the performance of the government. The general opinion among analysts, television anchors and economists, who have a thing or two to say on such matters, was that the government had done well on the economic front, given that that the Indian economy grew by 7.5 per cent per year over the last three years. In coming to this conclusion, these individuals did not take one thing into account: the falling price of crude oil.

When Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister in late May 2014, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was a little over $108 per barrel. As of June 8, 2017, a little over three years later, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil stood at $48 per barrel, around 56 per cent lower.

Lest I be accused of making only a point to point to comparison, take a look at the following figure.

Source: Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell.

In May 2014, the average daily price of the Indian basket of crude oil was $106.85 per barrel. It rose in June 2014 to $109.05 per barrel. And then the price of oil started to fall. Since June 2014, the overall trend in oil prices, has been on its way down (as can be seen by the red arrow). Even though prices have gone up in the recent past, they are well below where they were between mid-2011 and mid-2014.

This can be best described as the luck of Narendra Modi. At least on the economic front, lower oil prices have made the Modi government look good.

I first made this point in the weekly Letter that I write. The foremost impact of lower oil prices has been on the rate of economic growth. Let’s try and create a counterfactual situation here by trying to figure out how economic growth would have turned out to be if the oil prices in the last three years, were as high as they were during the time when Manmohan Singh was the prime minister.

At its most basic level, the gross domestic product (GDP) is expressed as Y = C + I + G + NX, where:

Y = GDP
C = Private Consumption Expenditure
I = Investment
G = Government Expenditure
NX = Exports minus imports

India imports around four-fifths of the oil that it consumes. To be very precise, in 2016-2017, the actual import dependency or the proportion of crude oil consumed that is imported stood at 82.1 per cent.

Given this, net exports (or NX) in the GDP tends to be a negative number. Higher oil prices essentially ensure that oil imports go up. Oil imports going up leads to the net exports number becoming a larger negative entry. In the process, the GDP number comes down and the GDP growth comes down as well.

The reverse is also true. Hence, when oil prices come down, the NX number comes down, the GDP goes up, and in the process the GDP growth goes up as well. This is precisely what has happened over the last three years.

As per the latest GDP numbers declared on May 31, 2017, the economic growth during the last three years stood at 7.5 per cent per year. This was primarily because the average price of Indian crude oil between April 2014 and March 2017, stood at $59.3 per barrel. In comparison, the average price of crude oil between April 2011 and March 2014 had been $108.5 per barrel.

Now, let’s assume that the average net exports figures were at the same level during the Narendra Modi years as they had been when Manmohan Singh was the prime minister between 2011-2012 and 2013-2014. We are basically trying to figure out as to what would have happened if the price of oil had continued to be at a high level even after 2014.

What impact would have this had on the economic growth? The economic growth during the three-year period that Modi has governed would have been 6.5 per cent per year, and not the 7.5 per cent that it has come to. This is nearly 100 basis points lower.

Let’s compare this to the economic growth during the last two years of Manmohan Singh’s government. (I am using the last two years because in case of the new GDP series launched in January 2015, data starts only from 2011-2012.) The economic growth stood at 5.9 per cent.

While this is lower than the three-year economic growth during Modi’s era, it is not as low as it initially seemed. And that is primarily because of lower oil prices during Modi’s time as the prime minister.

So, lower oil prices have bumped up the economic growth figure. They have also benefited the government in another way. The benefit of lower oil prices hasn’t been passed on to consumers in the form of lower petrol and diesel prices.

As mentioned earlier, between May 2014 and now, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil has fallen by 56 per cent. During the same period, the petrol price in Mumbai has fallen by a mere 1.9 per cent. In case of diesel, the price has fallen by only 3.6 per cent.

Hence, the central government and the state governments have totally managed to capture the fall in oil prices. If we look at the central government, the net excise duty collections of the central government stood at around Rs 1,76,535 crore in 2013-2014. This has jumped by more than 100 per cent to Rs 3,87,369 crore by 2016-2017, primarily because the government chose to capture a bulk of the fall in price of oil by increasing excise duty on petrol as well as diesel.

This helped the government to keep increasing its expenditure without having to bother about a large fiscal deficit.

It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the government had passed on the fall in the price of crude oil to consumers in the form of lower petrol as well as diesel prices. Consumers would have had more money to spend. And robust consumer spending is always a better way to create economic growth than a terribly leaky government spending.

To conclude, while the Modi government has done better in the last three years than the Manmohan Singh government did in its last two years, the fall in the price of crude oil has been a major reason behind it. Modi has been terribly lucky, and it’s time that analysts and economists acknowledged this reality.

The interesting thing here is that people have a hard time distinguishing between luck and skill. As Michael Mauboussin writes in The Success Equation: “Our minds have an amazing ability to create a narrative that explains the world around us, an ability that works particularly well when we already know the answer.” In Modi’s case, this has meant attributing India’s good official economic growth rate to his skill rather than to the fact that he got lucky.

The column originally appeared on Thinkpragati.com on June 14, 2017.

The Trouble with Economic Forecasting is…

PricingSometime in May last year, I wrote a column for a digital publication, in which I said that the Modi government’s luck on the oil front would run out in 2015-2016. As is wont in such cases, I was more than a little vague about exactly when would the Modi government’s luck on the oil front run out.

I was just trying to follow an old forecasting rule: “forecast a number or forecast a date, but never both”. So, I sort of forecast a date. Honestly, I was wrong about it. The Narendra Modi government’s luck on the oil front continued through 2015.

Nevertheless, things have started to heat up in the recent past. Since February 12, 2016, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil has gone up by around 75%. As on May June 2, 2016, the price of the Indian basket for crude oil was at $46.83 per barrel.

This isn’t a column on trying to defend, what was a largely wrong forecast. What I want to explore in this column is the basic point about forecasting being a very difficult thing to do. While it’s always easy to explain things in retrospect, it is very difficult to predict how things will play out. And it is even more difficult to predict when things will play out, the way you expect them to play out.

Let’s take the basic forecast of oil prices going up. I was right about the point that when oil prices start to go up, the luck on which the good fortunes of the Modi government are built will start to run out. I will not explain it again here, given that I have explained it, often enough in the past, and perhaps might do it again, in the days to come.

Nevertheless, I got the timing wrong, despite making a very open ended forecast. There are two basic points to making a forecast—one is you expect the trend to continue—the other is you do not expect the trend to continue.

I expected that the trend of lower oil prices would not continue. While I have been right about that, but I have been wrong about the timing.

But what about forecasts, where economists and analysts, expect a trend to continue. Take the case of what economist Arvind Panagariya wrote in India—The Emerging Giant, a book that was published in 2008: “India has been growing at an average annual rate exceeding 6 percent since the late 1980s. During the four years spanning 2003-2004 and 2006-2007, its growth rate reached 8.6 percent—a level close to that experienced by the East Asian miracle economies of the Republic of Korea and Taiwan during their peak years. As the book goes to press, fears that the economy is overheating can be heard loudly, but virtually no one is predicting a significant slowdown in the growth rate in the forthcoming years.”

Panagariya, like most economists, did not see the financial crisis, coming. He also, like most economists, thought the current trend would continue. But that did not turn out to be the case. Also, most economists find it easier to say what other economists are saying. This is because if and when they are wrong, then they are wrong in a majority.

And it is safe to be wrong when everyone else is wrong. Nevertheless, if one economist forecasts something which goes against the trend and is wrong about it, then only he has to bear the consequences of being wrong. Life is easy, when everyone is wrong, and hence it makes sense to go with the herd.

Let’s take another example here of the economist Milton Friedman and the prediction he made when the price of oil started to go up in the early 1970s.

In January 1974, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) raised the price of oil to $11.65 per barrel. This was after OPEC’s economic commission had determined that the price of oil should be $17 per barrel.

It was around then that the economist Milton Friedman wrote in a col­umn in the Newsweek magazine where he predicted that “the Arabs … could not for long keep the price of crude at $10 a bar­rel.” For this prediction, Friedman was awarded the Booby Prize by the Association for the Promotion of Humour in International Affairs
The price of oil was quoting at more than $18 a barrel by the end of 1979. And by early 1981, it had risen four-fold and was quoting at nearly $40 a barrel. Friedman had been proven wrong for a long period of time.

In 1986, finally the price of oil was quoting again at $10 a bar­rel. And Friedman wrote a “I told you so” column in an issue of the Newsweek magazine which appeared on March 10, 1986. The column was titled “Right at Last, an Expert’s Dream.” This, of course, was in jest. As Friedman confessed, “Timing, as well as direction, is important…I had expected the price of oil to come down far sooner.”
Now does that mean that it makes sense to go against the herd? I wish I could say that. Over the last few years, a huge number of gold bugs have been coming out of the woodwork and predicting that gold prices will rise again. While, gold has done reasonably well in the recent past, a sustained rally in the yellow metal hasn’t been seen as yet.

So, next time you hear an analyst or an economist, make a forecast, with great confidence, it might be worth remembering that old saying in economics: “economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions”.

The column was originally published on June 7, 2016

The Rs 90,000 crore Consumer Spending Kicker That the Govt Missed Out On

 

light-diesel-oil-250x250The Narendra Modi government has increased the excise duty on petrol and diesel nine times since November 2014.

This has ensured that the benefit of falling oil prices has not been totally passed on to end consumers in the form of lower petrol and diesel prices. What has not helped is that the state governments have also increased their share of taxes on petrol and diesel and ensured that the benefits of lower oil prices have not been totally passed on to the citizens of this country.

A press release put out by the Bhartiya Janata Party in February 2016 said that all state governments except Mizoram, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat, had increased the value added tax on petrol and diesel.

Hence, the increase in excise duty on petrol and diesel, is not the only reason for an increase in the price of petrol and diesel.

Having said that, what would have happened if the benefit of lower oil prices had been totally passed on to the end consumers in the form of lower petrol and diesel prices? Dr Soumya Kanti Ghosh, the chief economic adviser of State Bank of India, has done an in-teresting calculation on this.

As he writes in a recent research note titled If Wishes Were Horses: Even though international oil prices are at a decade low, yet Government has increased excise duty both in petrol and diesel. So, we made an attempt to calculate total savings of the consumers if Government would not have hiked the excise duty on petrol and diesel products.”

So what does Ghosh’s calculation tell us? As he writes: “By removing only additional central excise duty from petrol and diesel retail selling prices, the hypothetical petrol price per litre would be Rs 47.63 (Actual: Rs 59.63), and diesel would be Rs 38.96 a litre (Actual: Rs 44.96)…If we assume that the consumption of petrol and diesel in FY16 of 95.28 MMT (Apr-Jan: 79.4 MMT), this would have translated into Rs 90,000 crore of savings for the consumers, which could have provided additional demand in the economy to the extent of 1% of GDP….In effect, this means that if wishes were horses, the decline in oil prices in itself may have provided the much needed impetus to demand and we may not have to wait for the pay hikes!” (MMT = million metric tonnes).

This means that if the central government wouldn’t have increased the excise duty on petrol and diesel, consumers would have benefitted to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore. This money would have been spent and pushed up consumer demand to the extent of 1% of GDP. And that would have been a huge thing. As is well known the multiplier effect of consumer spending is significantly better than that of government spending, where leakages are huge.

Of course, if the government did do things along these lines, it would have meant that the fiscal deficit of the government would have gone up. The fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends. If the government gave up taxes to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore (actually lesser than this, but I will come to it), it’s earnings would have fallen, leading to an increase in its fiscal deficit.

Actually, the increase in fiscal deficit would be lower than Rs 90,000 crore. This is because the increase in consumer demand due to excise duty on petrol and diesel not being raised, would also bring in some money to the government in the form of both direct and indirect taxes.

Further, there were other ways through which the government could look at bringing down its fiscal deficit. For starters, it owns 11.19% stake in the cigarette maker ITC. This stake as on March 21, 2016, was worth a little over Rs 29,600 crore. Why does the government, which runs anti-tobacco advertisements, continue to own a cigarette maker? (I know I keep repeating this point like a broken record).

This stake could have been sold and a significant portion of the increase in fiscal deficit could have been covered. Those who like to support the government on all issues like to point out that ownership of shares of ITC brings in a dividend for the government. Hence, why let go of this regular income?

The question to ask here is what is the dividend yield of ITC? The dividend of ITC is 1.7%. Dividend yield is the total dividend the company has paid out during the year divided by its current market price. The dividend yield of ITC is less than half of the return of 4% available on a savings bank account. Given this, the dividend argument clearly does not work.

Also, the government continues to run many loss making companies. The Economic Survey for 2015-2016 released before the budget points out that public sector enterprises have accumulated losses of Rs 1.04 lakh crore. The government keeps bearing these losses. And the funny thing is that some of these losses are not even a part of the budget.

As economist Jaimini Bhagwati recently wrote in the Business Standard: “Funds will be provided to support continued losses in public sector undertakings including Indian Railways, some of which are not part of the Budget.”

If these loss making companies are shut down and their assets (primarily land) gradually monetised, it will tremendously benefit the government. The government has made some noises along these lines.

As the finance minister Arun Jaitley said in his budget speech: “A new policy for management of Government investment in Public Sector Enterprises, including disinvestment and strategic sale, has been approved. We have to leverage the assets of central public sector enterprises(CPSEs) for generation of resources for investment in new projects. We will encourage CPSEs to divest individual assets like land, manufacturing units, etc. to release their asset value for making investment in new projects.” Let’s hope this doesn’t just end up as a paragraph in a finance minister’s speech.

The disinvestment target at the beginning of the year was set at Rs 69,500 crore. Only Rs 25,312.60 crore was achieved. Hence, if the government had made an effort to earn money through these routes, it wouldn’t have had to increase the excise duty on petrol and diesel, nine times since November 2014.

Also, it needs to be pointed out here is that not all the savings on account of lower petrol and diesel prices, on account of government not raising the excise duty, would have translated into consumer spending.

Some of it is bound to have found its way into bank accounts and other financial savings instruments. Even that is a good thing given that household financial savings have been falling over the years. In 2007-2008, the household financial savings had stood at 11.2% of the gross domestic product (GDP). By 2011-2012, they had fallen to 7.4% of GDP. Since then they have risen marginally. In 2014-2015, the household financial savings stood at 7.7% of GDP.

A higher household financial savings ratio would have worked towards lower interest rates over the long term. Further, the government may not have been able to fund the entire shortfall of Rs 90,000 crore through these ways. Nevertheless, a good portion could have been filled in through the methods highlighted above.

This means that the government would not have had to increase the excise duty nine times. Possibly, four or five times would have been enough. Nevertheless, making money by simply raising excise duty on petrol and diesel was the easy way out, and who doesn’t like to take the easy way out.

The column appeared in Vivek Kaul’s Diary on March 22, 2016

When Oil Price Falls, Excise Duty Goes Up. When It Rises, Petrol/Diesel Prices Go Up.

light-diesel-oil-250x250Petrol and diesel prices have gone up. This time the prices were increased by the oil marketing companies(OMCs).

The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), one of the OMCs, said in a press release that it has decided to “increase in Retail Selling Price of Petrol by Rs. 3.07/litre at Delhi (including State levies) with corresponding price revision in other States.”

At the same time, it has decided to increase the “Retail Selling Price of Diesel by Rs. 1.90/litre at Delhi (including State levies) with corresponding price revision in other States.” The increase came in effect from the midnight of March 16-March 17, 2016.

The price of oil has been going up over the last few weeks. As on February 11, 2016 the price of the Indian barrel of crude oil was at $26.95 per barrel. Between then and March 16, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil has gone up by 34% to $36.10 per barrel.

In rupee terms also the increase in prices has been more or less similar. The price of one barrel of crude oil has one up by around 32.7% to Rs 2431.94.

This increase in price has forced the oil marketing companies to increase the price of petrol and diesel. As the IOC said in its press release: “The current level of international product prices of Petrol & Diesel and INR-USD exchange rate warrant increase in price of Petrol and Diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision.”

In any other market this would have been a fair deal. If the price of the input goes up (i.e. oil in this case), the price of the output (i.e. petrol and diesel in this case) goes up as well. But the Indian oil products market is anything but fair.

When the price of oil was falling, the central government and the state governments captured the major portion of the fall, by increasing taxes which are built into the price of petrol and diesel. Since November 2015, the central government has increased the excise duty on petrol and diesel, five times.

This basically means that when the oil price falls, the governments capture the major part of the benefit. But when they go up, the consumer has to pay for it. How is this fair in any way? Also, what happens if oil prices continue to go up, will the entire increase in price be continued to be passed on to the consumers? If the government did not pass on the total fall in oil prices to the consumer, it is only fair that it doesn’t pass on the entire increase as well.

The point being that the consumer has to pay both ways, when the prices come down and when they are going up.

One logic offered by those who like to defend the government on anything and everything, is that the money coming in through the increase in excise duty on petrol and diesel, is being used for farmers. This conclusion possibly comes from the tone of the finance minister Arun Jaitley’s budget speech. But is this true?

Economist Ashok Gulati exposes this sleight of hand by the government in a column in The Indian Express. As he points: “The allocation for the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers’ Welfare (DoA), is raised from the revised estimate (RE) of Rs 15,809 crore in FY16 to a budgeted estimate (BE) of Rs 35,983 crore for FY17, a whopping increase of 127 per cent! This would make anyone jump and conclude what a wonderful stroke the finance minister has played for farmers. But hold on. There’s a catch. Much of the increase (Rs 15,000 crore) is due to interest subsidy on short-term credit. Earlier, this subsidy was Rs 13,000 crore and was shown under the Department of Financial Services. Now, it’s transferred to the DoA.”

So where is the money raised through the increase in excise duties and the money saved because of a fall in oil prices essentially going? Jayant Sinha, the minister of state in the finance ministry, recently explained this in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

Details of Subsidies (Rs. in crore)

Subsidy2012-132013-142014-152015-16 RE
Food8500092000117671139419
Fertilizer65613673397107672438
Petroleum96880853786026930000
Other95869915924215944
Total257079254632258258257801
RE=Revised Estimates

Source: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=137493

Take a look at the above table. The petroleum subsidy has fallen from Rs 96,880 crore in 2012-2013 to Rs 30,000 crore in 2015-2016. The OMCs currently suffer under-recoveries every time they sell kerosene and domestic cooking gas. In March 2016, the under-recovery on kerosene stood at Rs 6.58 per litre. The government compensates the OMCs for these under-recoveries and this shows up under the petroleum subsidy head.

Despite the fall in petroleum subsidies, the total subsidy bill of the government has barely changed. It has slightly increased from Rs 2,57,079 crore in 2012-2013 to Rs 2,57,801 crore in 2015-2016.

What the table shows clearly is that the fall in petroleum subsidies has been more or less been made up for by an increase in food subsidies. The food subsidy bill of the government has jumped from Rs 85,000 crore to Rs 1,39,419 crore.

As I have discussed in previous columns, the food subsidy regime in India is very leaky. A major portion of the rice, wheat and sugar which are distributed through it, are siphoned off, by the owners of the fair price shops through which the distribution takes place. The government is trying to plug this leak by ensuring that in the days to come, the subsidy is paid directly into the bank account of the targeted beneficiaries.

As Sinha said: “In cash transfer, the benefit is transferred in the beneficiary’s account, preferably Aadhaar seeded. Presently, LPG subsidy is transferred directly in to the bank accounts of beneficiaries. Food subsidy in cash is disbursed in wo Union Territories viz, Puducherry and Chandigarh, directly in beneficiaries’ bank accounts, in kind, after biometric authentication, in 70000 fair price shops at present.”

The government also has plans to pay out fertilizer subsidy directly during the next financial year in a few districts across the country on a pilot basis. This is a good move and I sincerely hope that the government meets more and more success on this front. The subsidies will reach the intended beneficiaries and will benefit the Indian economy in the process.

The column originally appeared on Vivek Kaul’s Diary on March 18, 2016