Petroleum products will come under GST: Pradhan

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday pitched for petroleum products to be included in the purview of the Goods and Services Tax as the GST Bills were tabled in Parliament.

"We expect all petroleum products to be part of GST in a few days. We will push for that," Pradhan said at the contract signing ceremony here for winners of the auction of discovered small fields.

"States have concerns about what will happen to their service tax and VAT. But I believe that GST will be advantageous for states. We are confident that petroleum products will be under the GST regime," he said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said last week that petroleum products, which will be within the purview of GST, slated to be implemented from July 1, would, however, continue to be taxed as per the current taxation regime until the GST Council agrees on applying GST to these products.

Pradhan also said India will soon launch the second round of auction of discovered oil and gas fields of state-run ONGC and Oil India.

"Discovered Small Fields (DSF) round-II is coming soon," he said.

The government on Monday signed contracts with 22 companies that won 31 contract areas in the recently concluded DSF round I auctions.

"It has been estimated that the indicative gross revenue over economic life would be approximately Rs 46,400 crore of which royalty collection and government's revenue share is expected to be around Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 9,300 crore, respectively," Pradhan said regarding the contracts signed.

As many as 46 contract areas designated for 67 discovered small fields across nine sedimentary basins were on offer under the DSF Bid Round 2016, bids for which came in from majors like Cairn India and Hindustan Oil Exploration Company, along with from five smaller foreign firms.

The government had put up for bidding for production under a new revenue sharing model these small fields originally discovered by state-run explorers Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) and Oil India. They, however, could not develop these because of their small size.

The auction was under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) approved in March last year, which is based on a revenue-sharing model as opposed to cost-and-output-based norms earlier.

--IANS

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