less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged that the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) had “run into difficulties”, Finance Minister P Chidambaram played the “all is well” card in a Press conference in the Capital on Saturday. He added that the Government was planning to start transferring the subsidy for liquified petroleum gas (lPG) in cash under the DBT scheme.
The Finance Minister said that these were early days for the DBT plan and claimed that the rollout would be nearly achieved by the end of the current financial year. “We want to do it as early as possible,” said Chidambaram. Chidambaram said he would soon meet Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily and sort out the issues related to the direct cash transfer for lPG.
Once implemented, the Government will transfer close to `4,000 to every household annually to enable people to buy 9 cylinders of lPG at market price. Currently, State-owned oil firms sell domestic cooking gas at a highly subsidised rate of `410.50 per 14.2-kg cylinder. It is half the market price and the difference is made good by the Government in the
form of subsidy to oil companies.
However the DBT scheme for lPG will not be possible till all the beneficiaries have personalised bank accounts and more importantly they get access to the all important Aadhar card.
The Finance Minister said the number of registered lPG users in the country was over 14 crore and it was quite possible that a significant number were either duplicate or a double entry.
“In DBT, initially, there will be problems, but we will achieve our goals provided we address those problems. We have rolled out DBT scheme in 43 districts. We have now decided to roll it out in 78 more districts. That will make it 121 districts, which is roughly 20 per cent of the whole country,” he said, adding that “there will be further rollouts and I am confident that by the end of 2013-14 the rollout will be complete or nearly complete”.