LPG Subsidy: The Central Government has given a big gift to the people of the country on domestic cooking gas prices from today and has announced to increase the subsidy, but how much it will affect the government exchequer – you can know here.
LPG Subsidy: Taking a big decision on August 29, 2023, the Central Government has announced to increase the subsidy on domestic LPG cylinder prices in the country. This relief will be given to crores of customers using common cooking gas.
In the same country, it has been decided to give an additional subsidy of Rs 200 to the beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. This means that from today they will get Rs 400 cheaper cylinder through this PMUY scheme because already the government is giving a subsidy of Rs 200 per cylinder on them.
33 crore consumers will take advantage
33 crore LPG cylinder consumers of the country will get the benefit of this subsidy, including the existing 9.60 crore beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. The government has also decided that 75 lakh more beneficiaries will be added to the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, after which the total number of beneficiaries of this scheme will increase to 10.35 crore.
How much burden will this decision of the government put on the exchequer?
This decision has been taken yesterday in the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Giving information about this, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said that this decision of the government will put a burden of Rs 7680 crore on the exchequer in 2022-23.
Modi government took this decision in view of the elections – claims the opposition
Assembly elections are going to be held in 5 states Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram this year and Lok Sabha elections will be held next year in 2024 . The opposition claims that the Modi government at the center is surrounded by inflation and the decision to subsidize LPG prices was taken because the NDA is clearly afraid of its defeat in these elections.
How much subsidy the government is saving – how much the expenditure will increase
After ending the subsidy on domestic gas cylinders, the government was saving a huge amount in this head. An example of this can be seen through the figures of decreasing subsidy year after year. In the year 2018, the central government spent Rs 23,464 crore for subsidy on domestic gas cylinders, 37,209 crore in 2019 and 24,172 crore in FY 2020.
The government has saved a huge amount by reducing the subsidy on LPG cylinders from the financial year 2022. In the financial year 2021, the central government had given a subsidy of Rs 11,896 crore and the payment of gas subsidy by the public sector oil distribution companies had come down to just Rs 2,706 crore in the first nine months of the financial year 2021-22.
Under this, in the year 2022, this amount decreased to Rs 242 crore. If seen in this way, year after year, the amount received by reducing the subsidy in the treasury of the government kept on increasing. Compared to last year, the government has saved Rs 11,654 crore.
Decision to give subsidy of Rs 200 under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana in 2022
After the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, in May 2022, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced a subsidy of Rs 200 on 12 gas cylinders available under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and through this a subsidy burden of Rs 6100 crore on the exchequer. was coming. This figure was to give gas subsidy of Rs 200 to a total of 9.60 crore beneficiaries.
