KATHMANDU, Feb 13: Cooking gas suppliers have postponed their protest programs after the government assured to form a study committee to fulfill their demands.
Threatening to launch protests, the Nepal LP Gas Association (NLPGA) had announced to halt collecting the purchase delivery orders (PDOs) from Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) from Wednesday. The cooking gas entrepreneurs have been pressurizing the government to raise the LPG dealers’ commission, transport costs and other overhead costs, which according to them, have not been revised for the last six years.
The entrepreneurs have sought the government’s intervention to fix at least five percent on commission to the gas dealers. In addition, they have been demanding the government to increase their commission by Rs 144 per cylinder, seeking to adjust their increased costs on LPG import incurred on transportation, internal distribution, technical loss and maintenance of the gas cylinders.
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Gokul Bhandari, former president of the NLPGA, said they called off the protests for now after Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supplies Damodar Bhandari during a meeting on Wednesday morning pledged to address the demands of the industrialists. “We defer the protests by another 15 days with the assurance from the government,” said Bhandari.
The LPG entrepreneurs in this regard have also refused the recommendation of the study report prepared by experts from Tribhuvan University and Kathmandu University. The report has suggested the government to increase the entrepreneurs’ commission by only Rs 12 per cylinder.
Following the protests announced by the gas industrialists, artificial shortage of cooking gas has been created at the local markets. According to the traders, the excessive stockpiling of the cooking gas has led to the shortage of the essential commodity in the market.
According to the NLPGA, a total of 59 gas botters did not collect the PDOs from the NOC on Wednesday. Based on the PDOs issued by the state-owned oil monopoly, the LPG companies import cooking gas from the depots of the Indian Oil Corporation.
The LPG bottling plants have been circulating three million cylinders a month to sell their products. A total of 12,000 gas depots have been selling cooking gas across the country. Of the total imports, around 40 percent is consumed inside the Kathmandu Valley.
