Kathmandu, June 14
The supply of the petroleum products is being eased gradually in the domestic market after the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has started importing an increased quantity of fuels by paying dues to the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).
With an improved supply of fuels, the number of vehicles lining up in front of the petrol pumps in the Kathmandu Valley has been decreasing day by day.
The supply of the petroleum products in the country had gone down by almost 70 per cent over the last weeks after the IOC cut down on the supply of fuels to Nepal owing to the increasing outstanding dues.
Sushil Bhattarai, deputy director of the NOC, said that the supply of fuels has been improving in the country, as the IOC has restarted supplying fuels on a regular basis for the last three days.
The supply of fuels will become normal within few days, he said.
"Since there was no fuel in the market, it will take few days to make the fuel supply normal," he said.
He, however, said that the market would not become normal despite the resumption of regular supply because of higher demand in the market in recent days.
The corporation supplies around 500,000 litres of diesel and 300,000 litres of petrol from the Thankot depot a day. The normal per day demand for diesel and petrol is 350,000 litres and 250,000, respectively, he said.
He said that the IOC’s dues will be cleared soon because the corporation has received Rs. 1.40 billion loan from the government on Thursday. The dues of the IOC had reached to IRs. 2 billion.
The Finance Ministry has provided the corporation with Rs.1.4 billion as loan assistance as per a previous decision taken by the cabinet.
Earlier, the corporation had borrowed Rs.1 billion from the Citizen Investment Trust and Rs.600 million from the Employees Provident Fund for easing the supply of fuels across the country.
He said, "Our outstanding dues is unlikely go up during this month because the prices of fuels have been decreasing in the international market."
He suggested that the government should think of addressing the frequent petroleum problems in the country in long-run by adopting effective measures.
