Three decades of control era comes to an end

new delhi: the government on monday ended its three decades old control over the petroleum sector by freeing pricing of petroleum products. "the administered pricing mechanism for petroleum sector has been dismantled from today. petroleum product pricing, except for subsidised petrol and diesel, will be market-determined," petroleum minister ram naik said. while government will continue to provide a subsidy of rs 3 per litre on kerosene for public distribution system (pds) and rs 90 per cylinder on domestic cooking gas (lpg), oil companies would be free to fix prices of petrol and diesel. in the deregulated scenario, prices of petro products would be governed by import parity, naik said, adding retail pricing, post-apm, would be based on import cost plus freight and local taxes. "domestic prices would be a reflection of increase or decrease in global prices," naik said. "subsidy on pds kerosene and domestic lpg will be phased out in three to five years," he said. dismantling of apm would also see indigenous crude oil produced by oil and natural gas corporation and oil india being given market determined price, he said. the oil coordination committee would be abolished and the oil pool account would be wound up, naik said adding bonds of rs 9,000 crore would be issued to oil companies to liquidate their outstanding with oil pool account.