Since government is the biggest user of petroleum products, Union Finance Minister should start its austerity drive by announcing stiff measures for a drastic cut in consumption of petrol and diesel in the government also to overcome deficit resulting out of steep hike in petrol prices.
- Bigger and smaller sized cars for fixation of excise-duty should be done according to ex-factory value rather than length of the car, and any new car at cost of public-exchequer should then be a ‘small’ car even for heads of nation, legislature, judiciary and bureaucracy.
- Government-loans to its employees including from public-sector should only towards small cars. Even public-sector banks should give car-loans only for small cars
- Purchase of cars especially big ones should be discouraged by increasing excise-duty on small cars at 20-percent, and 40 or 50 percent for big cars. Such increased excise-earnings should be utilised for reducing tax on petroleum products like was done in Goa.
- Meeting of finance-ministers from all states should be convened for uniform tax-structure (local and central) to have uniform net consumer-prices of petroleum products throughout the country. Huge price-difference to tune of 10-20 percent in different states is unfair.
- Price so calculated should be rounded to next complete rupee in case of petrol, diesel, kerosene and CNG, while in case of cooking-gas, it should be in multiples of rupees fifty. This rounding-off can result in increased earnings for oil-companies.
- Large overheads and publicity-budget should be curtailed by merger of all public-sector oil-companies in one unified company.
- Discounts on petrol purchased by affluent class through credit-cards should be abolished. A recent RTI response reveals that HPCL encourages more purchase of petrol because credit-card users usually get their tanks full by swap of credit-cards.
- Only branded petrol and diesel should be sold initially in urban areas, and then throughout the country on all retail-outlets.
- New-look translucent LPG cylinders made of fibre-glass ensuring tamperproof full-load supply of LPG gas per cylinders should replace old iron-cylinders with one time replacement-cost rather than charging rupees 300 extra for every re-fill.