Finance minister P Chidambaram on Thursday said he expected the government’s share of oil subsidy burden in 2013-14 to be not more than R20,000 crore against R1 lakh crore (including R45,000 crore to be paid this year).
A stellar achievement if this materialises, the minister’s optimism is based on the progressive decontrol of diesel prices, which accounted for over 60% of last year’s subsidy bill, the softening of the crude and new method of export parity pricing to estimate the oil marketing companies’ under-recoveries starting this fiscal.