Pandemic-hit govt finances gets ‘crude’ rescue, oil import bill to fall

By Subhash Narayan New Delhi, Dec 28 : At least in the oil sector, the global health emergency caused by coronavirus is coming to India’s advantage. While the relatively lower global prices helped the government boost its revenues by increasing duty on auto fuels, the demand squeeze due to the pandemic and softer crude prices could help it further by sharply reducing the import bill that may fall to decade-low levels of $60 billion in FY21.
Declining consistently since April, India’s oil imports fell 18.14 per cent (YoY) to around 122.7 million tonnes (MT) in April-November period of FY21 as compared to 129.9 MT in the same period last year.
In value terms, the April-June oil imports stood at $32.4 billion, down 53.44 per cent in the dollar terms from $69.6 billion in April-November of FY20.
With international crude prices hovering lower than the levels prevailing in December last year by almost $15 a barrel and average crude prices in January-March period expected to remain at the same levels of the previous fiscal, India’s import bill could fall below $60 billion in FY21, the lowest level in last decade.
A similar import bill was witnessed in FY16 when crude had fallen to $26 a barrel for some time.
The lower import bill will come even if oil imports remain at the same levels of last year. In FY20, India imported 227 MT of crude. This year, till November, crude import stands at 122.7 MT. It means that even if monthly crude imports stands at regular levels of around 20 MT, the FY21 import figure will be lower than last year.