It´s ridiculous that hapless consumers are made to brave the long queues every few months, wasting valuable time that they could have used more productively. And this cycle just keeps repeating itself as if there is something absolutely inevitable about it. Until a few years ago, revision of petroleum prices used to invite violent protests and the government would defer an impending price rise and create a shortage in the market so that a desperate public would caved in to the revision rather than face the crippling shortage. But we thought that was a thing of the past. During the last three price revisions, in line with trends in the international market, there was zero protest in the streets. We even didn´t hear any political party, or its student wing, raising a voice.
But the unsightly queues have surfaced again. News reports claim that NOC is back to its old tricks and is deliberately curtailing supply as Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal refused to give his consent to a plan to immediately revise the prices. Prime Minister Nepal is learnt to have told Rajedra Kumar Mahato, who heads the Ministry of Supplies and Commerce that oversees NOC, that the corporation must first reduce its leakage and only then can raise the price again. The prime minister has a point. NOC suffers huge leakages that run into millions of rupees every month. These leakages, unless checked, will continue to bloat NOC’s losses that in turn will eventually be reflected in the prices that consumers pay. But leakages cannot continue as a valid excuse for short supply. NOC must present the prime minister a credible plan for leakage control and assure him of a timeframe for bringing the leakage down to an acceptable level. If, in the meantime, international prices do go up, creating pressure for revision of domestic prices, the prime minister should give the green light for an upward revision. But deferring the recurrent problem is not a solution.
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