ASRTU intervention sought for getting discount on fuel

Hyderabad: With the road transport corporations of several States consuming more than 110 crore litres of diesel per annum, the experts in the field wanted the Association of State Road Transport Undertakings (ASRTU), a body of all the transport corporations, to have a tie up with oil companies so that the State-owned corporations get diesel at discounted rates.

The TSRTC alone consumes about 25 crore litres of diesel every year and the expenditure is about Rs 1,000 crore. According to an estimate, collectively different RTCs under ASRTU consume more than 110 crore litres of diesel a year. The corporation gets a nominal discount in wake of being a bulk customer. However, if the corporation has to save money, it would require more discounts. The trade union leaders argue that the crude oil prices in December 2019 were 65 US dollars per barrel and by May 2020 the prices had come down by 63 per cent to 23 US dollars. The corporations which were consuming diesel in bulk could not get the benefit even though the prices had gone down.

Trade union leader and former director of APSRTC M Nageswara Rao said that the TSRTC spends huge money on diesel. The ASRTU should come out with an action plan to take up the case of the transport corporation. If it can urge the oil companies to have direct dealing with the corporations or ASRTU as a unit, a lot of money can be saved, said Nageswara Rao. He said that even if Rs 5 is discounted by the oil companies, the TSRTC can save Rs 100 crore per year and hundreds of crores of rupees for the urban transport corporation. The authorities should also talk to the ASRTU and urge it to take up the issue with the oil companies, he said.

The former board director said that the urban transport corporations were loss making because governments do not support them. The hike in diesel prices would have a direct impact on the earnings, but they cannot increase the ticket fares and they start getting tumbled. He said that various taxes like VAT and other cess add on to the expenditure leading to losses. In this perspective, the ASRTU should take up the case of all the transport corporations, he added.