Natural gas, aviation turbine fuel to be added to the GST ambit

Union Petroleum Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, has appealed the Finance Minister to include natural gas and aviation turbine fuel (ATF) under the ambit of Goods and Services Tax (GST). He has asked the FM on Monday to take up this matter in the upcoming GST Council meeting.

Currently, the key petroleum products including petrol, diesel, natural gas, crude oil and ATF are not included in the GST regime due to dependence of state government’s revenue in this sector. 

An estimated investment of $58 million is expected by 2023 by the exploration and production sector of India. In regard to the concerns related to the exploration sector, FinMin said that India will honour producer’s contracts.

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India has completed three bid rounds under Open Acreage Licensing Policy and two rounds of bidding under the Discovered Small Fields (DSF) policy under the NDA government.

The government of India has been striking hard to increase the natural gas share by 2022. 

“An estimated investment of $60 billion was lined up in building gas pipelines, terminals, and city gas infrastructure that are in different stages of implementation”, said Pradhan. Moreover, India‘s energy sector has recorded the second-highest growth in investment during the period 2015-18 as per the International Energy Agency. 

To boost natural gas production in the country, more investment from the private sector is needed. The government had asked state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) to call for the private partnerships to expand production in 66 blocks.

The city gas distribution (CGD) network are anticipated to cover half of the country’s geography and will serve 70 per cent of the population through the availability of low carbon and affordable natural gas.

For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at komal.chawla@cleartax.in