KATHMANDU, March 14: After widespread criticism for overcharging consumers, the controversial Birat Petroleum has brought down its petrol price to Rs 99 per liter from Rs 130.
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Jayanti Oil Store of Tripureshwar, one among three petrol pumps authorized by Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) to distribute Birat’s petrol, has started selling Birat’s petrol at Rs 99 per liter from Sunday morning.
“We purchased 10,000 liters of petrol from Birat at a lower rate, which allows us to sell the purchased petrol at Rs 99 per liter,” Raj Kumar Maharjan, manager of Jayanti Oil Store told Republica, adding, “We sold around 3,000 liters of Birat’s petrol at Rs 99 per liter on Sunday.”Maharjan informed that Jayanti Oil Store sold almost 13,000 liters of Birat’s petrol at Rs 130 per liter in the last two-three days. “However, Birat provided us petrol at a rate similar to that of NOC and, thus, we are selling petrol at Rs 99 per liter.”
Maharjan also informed that that Jayanti Oil Store is unlikely to purchase any more petrol from Birat though an understanding to purchase 40,000 liters was earlier reached with Birat.
Gokul Dhital, director general of Department of Supplies (DoS), said that Birat began selling petrol at Rs 99 per liter starting from Sunday morning. “A report of our monitoring team on Sunday said that Birat began selling petrol at Rs 99 per liter after petrol pumps selling Birat’s petrol witnessed customer crisis,” Dhital added.
Although the supply of petroleum products has turned normal and petrol is easily available at Rs 99 per liter, Birat had been selling petrol at Rs 130 per liter through three different petrol pumps designated by the government to Birat to sell its petrol. Birat, which got temporary license to purchase petroleum products during theIndian blockade, has been importing petrol and selling at its own rate. Regulatory bodies, including NOC, has been doing nothing citing that the government has not mentioned who is responsible to control the price of fuel imported by private bodies. Instead, NOC had been managing distributing mechanism for Birat to sell the petrol at expensive rate.
For the second time, the private company had imported 132KL of petrol and had initially sought approval from the government to sell it at Rs 155 per liter. Later on, the private firm began selling petrol at Rs 130 per liter after NOC allowed its three authorized petrol pumps to purchase petrol from Birat and sell at Birat’s own rate.
Earlier in January too, the private company had imported around 97,000 liters of petrol and sold at Rs 190 per liter.
In the meantime, Parshuram Upreti of Birat Petroleum also confirmed that they have started selling petrol at Rs 99 per liter. “We have reduced the price to Rs 99 per liter and we have some few tankers of petrol to be cleared out,” he said.
