Due to Nepal Oil Corporation's ( NOC) failure to pay customs duty, about 84 tankers carrying 900 tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) have been stranded at Nepal- India border for the last couple of days, resulting in fast decrease in stock of cooking gas in the capital city Kathmandu Valley.

"The current supply of LPG is not enough to meet daily needs, and the demand has been going up tremendously," Vice President of LPG Industry Association Sawar Lal Agrawal told reporters on Monday.

Although the supply of other petroleum products such as diesel and petrol has improved after three weeks of disruption, LPG supply still remained sluggish for the next three weeks.

According to Agrawal, NOC's poor financial health has caused delay in imports of the cooking gas from India.

An already financially distressed NOC's outstanding dues to Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has reached 5.76 billion Nepali rupees (82.28 million US dollars) as of May 1, while its monthly accumulated losses have crossed over 580 million rupees (8.28 million dollars).

With such a gloomy financial status, the state-owned petroleum import monopoly is not even able to pay daily customs duty of about 20 million rupees (285,714 dollars) to Birgunj customs in central Nepal, some 100 km south of Kathmandu, bordering with India, which has also affected the supply.

Bibendra Pradhananga, president of LPG Traders Association said that the traders are hardly meeting a daily demand of 20,000 cylinders in the Kathmandu Valley.

Nepal consumes about 85,000 tons LPG every month, whereas the demand of Kathmandu Valley alone constitutes about 75 percent of the total supply, according to Pradhananga.

Source: Xinhua