With the LPG cooking gas reaching almost every household, the price hikes now are affecting more and more people. Taking a look at how India became the country with the costliest cooking gas and the second biggest consumer of LPG, the future of a comfortable kitchen would soon be a remote possibility.
The price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders was hiked for the second time this month just a few days back. While the price of domestic LPG cylinders has been raised by Rs 3.50, the price of commercial LPG cylinders has been increased by Rs 8.
The non-subsidized domestic LPG cylinders now cost over Rs 1,000 in almost all the cities in India ranging from 1003.50 in Delhi to the highest 1092 in Patna. Earlier, on May 7, the price of domestic LPG cylinders was raised by Rs 50.
Based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), the LPG per litre price in India is the most expensive compared to any other country in the world.
Cutting a joke to the common man, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday through a series of tweets said that more than 9 crore beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana will now get a subsidy of ₹ 200 per gas cylinder (for up to 12 cylinders), leading to a reduction in its price, which will now cost ₹ 803 per 14.2 kg cylinder.
A 14.2 kg LPG cylinder normally costs ₹ 1,003 in the national capital. Poor women, who received free cooking gas connections under the scheme, will get the ₹ 200 subsidy directly in their bank accounts.
Interestingly, People who were given LPG connections under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) are not able to get the cylinders refilled due to the high prices.
“The biggest reason given by households that owned an LPG connection but stacked it with other cooking fuels was the inability to afford the high recurring expense of refilling their cylinders. According to a CEEW report, an average household in rural India set aside 4.9% of its monthly expenditure on procuring cooking fuel in March 2020. By April 2022, this had risen to 11% of the household monthly expense as reported by BBC.
More than 90 lakh beneficiaries of Ujjwala scheme in the country had not refilled their cylinder even once during 2021-2022. 1.08 crore people have only managed to refill it just once in the entire year, petroleum companies' reply to a Right to Information (RTI) query revealed.
A 2020 study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a policy think-tank, said that LPG's share in Indians' primary cooking fuels had increased from 28.5% in 2011 to 71% by March 2020. According to Wood Mackenzie, a global energy consultancy group, India is expected to overtake China as the world's largest cooking gas LPG residential sector market by 2030.
