KATHMANDU, April 3: Petroleum dealers called off their strike late Friday night, following their talks with the government which agreed to address the demands raised by the dealers. [break]
This will help resume the stalled transportation of petroleum products from Saturday morning.
As per the agreement, Nepal Oil Corporation has agreed to cancel new tankers purchase deal.
Earlier, the talks between the government and agitating petroleum dealers started at the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies Friday. However, even after more than six hours of negotiation, the talks participants said that chances of the two sides striking a deal today are slim.
“It is very difficult to say whether an agreement can be reached by late today,” said Saroj Pandey, president of Nepal Petroleum Dealers Association (NPDA), from the negotiations, attended also by Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) representatives.
If the talks fail to conclude Friday, they will continue on Saturday as well, said officials.
During the talks, dealers pushed the government to raise their commission (profit margin) to 3 percent. This demand, if fulfilled, will raise their profit by some 50 paisa per liter of fuel over the existing profit margin of Rs 2 per liter of petrol and Rs 1.40 per liter of diesel and kerosene.
The NPDA representatives argued that the commission level provided now was low because NOC does not cover technical losses, such as shrinkage and quantity loss which dealers suffer while transporting and downloading the products at refilling stations.
“Given the technical aspects of quantity loss, the government is likely to fulfill this demand of theirs,” said a Supply Ministry source. As for the other demand, that the government not implement the decision to provided subsidy on diesel for industries, NPDA has shown willingness to compromise.
Said a ministry source, “Their (dealers’) arguments on the subsidy issue largely centered around possible misuse of the subsidy. So, we are urging them to actively take part in the formulation of a subsidy distribution manual so that misuse and possible anomalies in distribution could be controlled, rather than opposing subsidy as such.”
Talks are still on over demands like reviewing NOC’s quality/standard by-law and refund of the money that dealers lost when the government revoked a price rise decision two years ago, said the source.
As for the demands of petroleum transporters, the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies (MoCS) Friday instructed the agitating tankers to agree to NOC’s decision to evict tankers that are older than 20 years. “Tankers older than 20 years are not only sensitive from a security perspective, insurance companies also do not insure them. Hence, we must evict them from the system,” said a MoCS source.
However, tanker operators opposed the idea vehemently. They demanded that the eviction decision be restricted to tankers older than 25 years. If NOC manages to break the tanker operators, it will replace some 25 percent of the 1,000 tankers operating in its supply chain.
Owing to the strike by tanker operators since Sunday, NOC has failed to import fuel from Raxaul, the largest import point, and is also facing problems transferring stock to Kathmandu from the Amlekhgunj depot.
With dealers on strike, as a result of which most private retailers have downed their shutters, a fuel shortage has hit the market since the last five days. Though NOC has issued more fuel to the police, army, Sajha and other institutional outlets to fight the problem, consumers have not been able to get fuel easily.
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