Study claims report on diesel cars faulty
The latest data put together by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) trashes the automobile industry contention that personal cars account for only 0.6 per cent of India’s diesel consumption.
Estimates recently released by the Society for Indian Automobile Manufactures (SIAM) and the 12th Planning Working Group on Petroleum Sector (WGP) had highlighted that personal cars, SUVs and taxis jointly accounted for five per cent of total diesel use in the country.
But these figures run contrary to the data cited in the Planning Commission’s Kirit Parikh Committee Report of 2010 (based on Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell data) which stated that diesel passenger cars were the second largest users of diesel in India. This controversy has triggered at a time when the ministry of petroleum and natural gas is demanding the ministry of finance impose an additional duty on diesel-run passenger cars to help offset under recovery from diesel, kerosene and LPG between April-September 2011 reported at `64,900 crores.
The Parikh Committee had proposed an additional excise duty on diesel cars with engines less than 1400cc but the amount should be doubled for larger models. Such a levy is being strongly opposed by the industry.
CSE’s executive director for research and advocacy Anumita Roychowdhury believes that the SIAM arrived at their figure through some clever jugglery. “They have listed out an undefined ‘others’ category which consumed 12 per cent diesel but is not covered by industry, power, agriculture and transport. The question is what is this ‘other’?” she asked.
SIAM director general Vishnu Mathur said, “Mr Kirit Parekh admitted in an inter-ministerial meeting that the 15 per cent figure of diesel consumption was not correct. When we at the SIAM started doing our own calculation, we arrived at 1.03 per cent diesel share but the figure of 0.6 per cent was given to us by the WGP.”
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