On Sunday (May 8), Congress scion Rahul Gandhi ended up scoring a self-goal while trying to blame the Modi government for rising prices of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) and increasing the price of gas cylinders in the country.
In a tweet, he claimed the price of an LPG cylinder during the Congress era in 2014 was ₹1,237 compared to 999 Rupees under Modi government. Rahul Gandhi explained that the consumer then used to pay ₹410 from his/her pocket directly while the government would spend an additional ₹847 of taxpayers’ money per cylinder on subsidy.
The Congress dynast then lamented how the Modi government had stopped paying subsidies, resulting in consumers paying an amount of ₹999 in total for an LPG cylinder in 2022. While doing so, Rahul Gandhi accepted that a gas cylinder was actually costlier in 2014 than it is in 2022 and the Congress government just used taxpayers to fund the additional amount.
“2 cylinders then for the price of 1 now. Only Congress governs for the welfare of poor and middle-class families. It’s the core of our economic policy,” he had tweeted.
Interestingly, the net price of an LPG cylinder is now cheaper than what it was 8 years despite the year-on-year inflation. As per an article in Macrotrends, the inflation rate in India was 6.65% (2014), 4.91% (2015), 4.95% (2016), 3.33% (2017), 3.95% (2018), 3.72% (2019) and 6.62% (2020). The value of 1,237 Rs in 2014 would be around 1,950 in 2022 with inflation further destroying Rahul Gandhi’s argument.
LPG production, crude oil prices, and imports
In its defense, the Congress party could claim that the prices of crude oil and natural gas were high during their tenure. After all, LPG is produced during the crude oil refining process or is extracted during the natural gas production process.
An article in Elgas stated, “LPG comes from two sources, with roughly 60% stripped from raw natural gas during natural gas processing and the approximately 40% of the LPG coming from crude oil refinery process. LPG is a co-product that occurs naturally. It is stored and distributed in LPG gas cylinders and larger vessels.”
“LPG gas is made from an LPG gas manufacturing process (LPG production process) that occurs during the natural gas processing and fractional distillation of crude oil,” the report added. India imports the majority of crude oil from the Gulf area.
It must be mentioned that Brent crude is the benchmark used for the oil markets in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. As per the available data, the price of 1 barrel of crude oil was around the same price i.e. $113 in 2014 as it is today.
Given that crude oil prices were similar, what could possibly explain the disparity of more than ₹200 in the prices of LPG cylinders? Although Rahul Gandhi tried to insinuate that the Modi government’s policies were affecting the middle class, he ended up proving how LPG cylinders are now cheaper than before. The money further saved in subsidies is now being channelized for several other projects by the government.
