BPCL not to get diversion fee waiver
IN A setback to the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) that is setting up Bina Oil Refinery, the State Government has decided not to waive off the diversion fee on the land allotted to the company on the ground that it has extracted ??too many concessions?.
IN A setback to the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) that is setting up Bina Oil Refinery, the State Government has decided not to waive off the diversion fee on the land allotted to the company on the ground that it has extracted ‘‘too many concessions”.
Sources in Revenue and Industries departments confirmed that the State Cabinet rejected the proposal to waive off the fee. The proposal came up before the Cabinet last month.
The government’s decision will put an additional burden of Rs 24 lakh on the BPCL, besides entailing Rs 8 lakh annual recurring expenditure, according to a company source.
The BPCL had signed a memorandum of understanding with the State Government for the refinery last year. Incidentally, the Digvijay Singh Government had waived off diversion fee on the 2300-acre land given to BPCL till 2002-03.
This was the only concession given by the Congress Government to the BPCL. But when the issue of diversion fee came before the Shivraj Government, the State Cabinet altered the previous government’s decision. What is more, the Cabinet decided to collect diversion fee with retrospective effect (after 2002-03).
Upset over the decision, BPCL officers told Hindustan Times that waiving off diversion fee was provided for in the overall concession package that the State Government had committed to the company.
The BPCL is setting up six-mmtpa refinery complex at Bina in Sagar district. When the project was conceptualised in 1995 its cost was Rs 5,277 crore. It was revised to Rs 6,354 crore (2001), Rs 9001 crore (2005) and now finally fixed at 10,300 crore.
The project was earlier delayed due to some environment clearances coupled with dilly-dallying attitude of successive State governments.
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