Pranab Mukherjee to consider oil companies' demand

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today said the ministry would consider the demand for additional money to oil companies as the state-run retailers have incurred huge losses in the first half of 2010-11.

 

"The oil minister and the oil secretary had discussions with me a couple of days ago. They wanted some money for the oil companies. I have asked for a formal proposal for consideration," Mukherjee told reporters on the sidelines of a Indian National Congress function here.

 

He said that the finance ministry had already given subsidy to the oil companies.

 

IndianOil, BPCL and HPCL had jointly incurred a loss of Rs31,000 crore for under-recovery in LPG, kerosene and diesel from April to September 2010.

 

To a query, he said that Bangladesh was seeking exclusion of 60 plus items from the negative list. He said that this was under government's consideration.

 

Stating that India was permitting duty-free access of a large number of items from Bangladesh, he said "we have also declared that commodities of least developed countries will have duty free access to the markets of India.