Journal of Petroleum & Environmental Biotechnology

Higher Petroleum Cess Enabling Mass Vaccination (COVID-19), Various Developmental Activities

Santosh Badure^* Department of Biotechnology, Aurora's Technological and Research Institute, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
^*Correspondence: Santosh Badure, Department of Biotechnology, Aurora's Technological and Research Institute, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, Email:

Received: 15-Jul-2021 Published: 25-Jul-2021, DOI: 10.35248/2157-7463.21.12.429

Editorial

The pandemic (COVID-19) has brought down the economic growth worldwide, has negatively impacted economy of nations, consumer demand and derailed the financial stability of common man. Scientists across the globe are working under tremendous pressure to formulate and produce affective solution against COVID-19, and have developed the vaccine as an effective medicinal tool to tackle and prevent the mass spread and fatalities.

The world’s largest democracy and oldest continuing civilsational nation India (that is Bharat) had also succeeded in developing the safe, effective and reliable indigenous vaccines namely Covaxin (produced by Bharat Biotech), Covishield (produced by Serum Institute).

Given, the oldest continuing civilization nation being the world’s second most populous country (137 crores approximately) after china, led to the huge demand of vaccines, mass scale production. To avert the pandemic growth, The Indian government allocated the specific budget of 35,000 crore rupees to procure vaccines, conduct successful mega free vaccination drive under the Aatmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana scheme. Badly affected Indian economy, struggling with the COVID-19, needed huge inflow of cash in government treasury to vaccinate the masses, manage the developmental activities effectively, resulted to the hike in auto fuel prices. Despite of being the crude oil prices lower at international level, the steep hike has been observed on fuel prices due to the high amount taxation on petroleum in Indian state.

In April 2020, a litre of petrol in national capital Delhi priced Rs 69.59 whereas the hike in taxes imposed by govts led to to Rs 101.84/litre (July 2021), increased by Rs 32.25 per litre in a year. Similar model has been adopted; during the period diesel price has increased by Rs 27.58 per litre from Rs 62.29 to Rs 89.87 a litre in the national capital.

The central government’s sharply hiked fuel cess led to huge collections on petrol and diesel jumped to Rs 3.35 lakh crore (central government collection) in FY21, almost 88% jump.

Recently appointed minister of petroleum and natural gas Hardeep Singh Puri stated that “revenue generated by taxation (on petroleum products) is used in various developmental schemes of the Government like Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), Pradhan Mantri Ujjawala Yojana (PMUY), Ayushman Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) and also to provide relief to the poor during the pandemic by schemes like Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) under which free ration was provided to 80 crore beneficiaries during April, 2020 to November 2020 and May-June 2021, free vaccination against COVID-19 etc.” [1]. This huge amount of collections in the form of petroleum taxes revenue has been facilitating the government to successfully manage and fulfill the developmental schemes and free mass vaccination drive of Indian Government.