Mittal seeks restoration of sops for Bhatinda refinery

Steel tycoon Lakshmi N Mittal today met Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to seek restoration of fiscal incentives that the state government had taken away from the Rs 18,919 crore oil refinery at Bhatinda.

Mittal and his top lieutenants Sudhir Maheshwari and Rajan Tandon met Chief Minister at Bhatinda to press for deferment of sales tax on petroleum products produced at the 9 million tonnes a year refinery for 15 years on lines of Gujarat government's incentives to private refineries.

State-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) and Mittal Energy Investment, Singapore - a Lakshmi N Mittal Group Company, hold 49 per cent stake each in the HPCL-Mittal Energy, the firm implementing the Bhatinda refinery project.

Sources said HMEL CEO Prabh Das and HPCL Director (Refineries) K Murali were also present at the meeting where a presentation on the status of the refinery was made.

Mittal had recently sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention to persuade the Punjab government to grant fiscal incentives for the refinery.

HMEL has completed nearly 80 per cent of the work on the refinery.

Without the fiscal concessions like sales tax waiver on fuel it produces, the landlocked refinery is not viable, Mittal is believed to have told the Punjab Chief Minister.

The previous Congress government in Punjab, headed by Amarinder Singh, had withdrawn waiver of sales tax on products from the refinery saying the fiscal concessions meant the state would have to forgo Rs 600-700 crore in revenues.

The Madhya Pradesh government on the other hand has given local sales tax concessions of Rs 250 crore per annum along with waiver of central sales tax for a period of 15 years to a refinery being built by Bharat Petroleum at Bina.

Sources said the Bhatinda refinery will produce petroleum products complying with Euro-IV emission norms with captive power plant for 165 Mw and crude oil pipeline from Mundra in Gujarat to Bhatinda with Single Point Mooring (SPM) and crude oil terminal at Mundra.

The refinery is the single largest investment at any location in Punjab. It would create large number of jobs directly and indirectly in the region.