South Asian Business news and information

The company owes large amount of money to the banks and Indian Oil Corporation. e Kantipur reports:

“After the release of the money from the government, we are preparing to send it to the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Sunday to cut our debt,” said an official at NOC. The government, in the past, provided soft-loans of three billion rupees to NOC, which is currently incurring a monthly loss of Rs 1.35 billion, the largest amount ever.

The government's financial support has come in the light of failure of NOC to supply petroleum products in sufficient quantities. Petrol scarcity has returned to the Kathmandu Valley. Many pumps are closed.  Long queues are becoming normal in the front of the few operational petrol pumps.

Linenda Shreshta of Nepal Petroleum Dealers' Association said the sole fuel distributor has cut distribution in the range of 50 percent.  “Supply has shrunk, while demand has soared,” he said.

Due to NOC’s inability to pay its loans, last year at this same time, IOC stopped the oil supply which created oil crisis. This year, the situation is even more critical. Globally, the price of oil has risen and India is also suffering from fuel and rice shortage. From now on, it has become imperative for Nepal government to go for alternative energy sources and increase awareness among people not to waste valuable fuel.

It is not only Nepal but also all other small countries like Bhutan, Sri Lanka, that are situated near India and imports various goods including fuel oil from India are suffering from such crisis. To come out of this crisis once and for all, these small countries have to switch to alternative source of energy or search for oil in their own region and stop wastage of fuel resources.

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