Systemic corruption in NOC
It was at the start of November that even the limited amount of petroleum products that India had allowed into Nepal in recent times started disappearing. These products, it turned out, were being sold in the black-market at up to five times the going rate. For instance the big LPG bottlers in Nepal, instead of selling the imported LPG to commoners as they had promised to do, reportedly sold 25,000 cylinders of cooking gas to big hotels and restaurants. Had they sold it at MRP, they would only have been able to pocket around Rs 1,400 per cylinder; on the other hand, when sold in black, a cylinder of LPG fetched up to Rs 10,000. The black-marketing on this scale would have been impossible without the complicity of NOC hierarchy and top government officials. But what did we expect! Only this past week, NOC Managing Director Gopal Bahadur Khadka had openly admitted that, under the given circumstances, it was "impossible to import oil products legally." He had also asked people to stop queuing for petrol and diesel as NOC had run out of stock. But even as he said it, many private petrol pumps were busy dispensing oil, at significant mark-ups.The black-marketing of petro products is getting more and more brazen. In the past six days, nearly 350 tankers have entered Nepal, ferrying in seven million liters of fuel, which, if distributed transparently, would have been able to meet 60 percent of market need. Yet all that fuel seems to have disappeared overnight. One industrialist, talking to Republica, admitted that he had been able to obtain petrol only after agreeing to pay to NOC Rs 3.5 million for a tanker of petrol, when, if acquired legally, the same volume of petrol would have cost him just Rs 2.08 million. It is also becoming clear that NOC is distributing oil only to petrol pumps that are ready to pay extra. The petrol pumps, in turn, sell oil in retail to select clientele who are ready to pay the illegal surcharge. This is why Kathmandu's roads these days are once again filled with private vehicles, even though the government has issued a directive to petrol pumps not to sell to private consumers. NOC, which is also the regulator of petro products in Nepal, is well aware of this anomaly, and yet it has decided to stay mum. It, clearly, has something to hide.
We would like to urge the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) to look into this dodgy business and initiate strong legal action against government officials complicit in black-marketing. For if this vicious circle of black-marketing is not broken, transport and commodity prices could soon spin out of control, leading to hyperinflation, a dangerous devaluation of the national currency and even a run on our banks, in other words, to a full-blown economic crisis. But even then, the well-off will be able to obtain everything they need in the black-market, whatever the price. It is those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder—or the vast majority of Nepalis—who will bear the brunt of such a crisis. At this rate, they may soon be unable to arrange for two meals a day.