Five days or so ago, Rajendra Mahato, minister for industry, commerce and supplies, as well as head of the Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC), gave the assurance that the petroleum products would be more easily available within days. Serpentine queues in front of the petrol pumps, sometimes even at midnight, are still there. Probably, it might take some more days for the crunch to ease up sufficiently. But the question is, again, one of ‘How long?’ For the past couple of years, oil supply has been highly erratic, because NOC has been in the red. The excess of the cost of sales over the selling price, and the resulting inability to pay on time the bills for oil purchased from the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) have led to disruptions in supply. For the past several months, there have been acute shortages of petroleum in the country, forcing the government to ration oil.

While the supplies minister has been insisting on more funds for oil payment, the finance minister is reported to have been refusing lately to free up the needed funds for NOC. But it is the government’s duty to ensure supply, as the state-owned NOC is the sole distributor of petro-products for Nepal. The problem should have been sorted long ago, sparing the public the shortages, the long queues, and the black market prices. Instead, the government has been presenting unsightly spectacles of requesting the Indian side to continue the supply on credit. Why can the government not take economic decisions to resume normal supply and cut out the losses? Is it because of the forthcoming elections? There have also been ideas for dual pricing – one for the border areas to check smuggling and the other for the rest of the country; one for those who can pay more but want to get the supply easily, and the other for those who want oil at the existing subsidised prices. While such ideas merit attention, they might well be suitable for the short term. But the best way would be to try to reach nearer and nearer economic pricing.