Govt to issue Rs 9297 cr oil bonds, seeks Rs 10K cr for relief fund

New Delhi, Mar 12 (UNI) The government today said it will issue oil bonds worth Rs 9,297 crore to partly compensate the losses suffered by state run oil firms due to spiralling global fuel prices.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram also sought Rs 10,000 crore for creating Farmers' Debt Relief Fund in the supplementary demands for grants 2007-08 tabled in the Lok Sabha today.

He sought approval of Parliament to issue special securities amounting to Rs 9,296.92 crore to state-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) IOC is likely to get Rs 5,098 crore worth of oil bonds, while the rest will be shared between HPCL and BPCL.

During April-September, the government had issued oil bonds worth Rs 11,257 crore to the oil marketing companies to compensate them due to spiralling global fuel prices.

Mr Chidambaram had announced the ambitious Rs 60,000 crore farm debt waiver in the budget 2008-09.

He has sought Rs 10,000 crore for creating Farmers' Debt Relief Fund in the supplementary demands for grants 2007-08.

Government has already assured that by June end this year, it will waive of all loans of small and marginal farmers and offer a one-time settlement scheme for big farmers.

The amount is for creating a fund towards the Debt waiver and debt relief fund scheme for farmers to cover all agricultural loans disbursed by all scheduled banks, regional rural banks and cooperative credit institutions up to March 31, 2007 and overdue as on December 31, 2007 and remained unpaid till February 29 this year.

The grants tabled by Chidambaram is sought to authorise gross additional expenditure of Rs 1,40,378.91 crore.

Of this, the proposal involving net cash outgo aggregates to Rs 43,059.92 crore and the remaining amount of Rs 97,318.16 crore will come from the savings of the Ministries, Finance Minister said.

He also sought the appproval of the Parliament for spending additional Rs 5,823.90 crore for providing subsidy to Food Corporation of India and Rs 3,586.70 crore for subsidy on imported fertilisers.

UNI SN MP RK2052