Discrepancy in April-June quarter fuel cess collections, reveal RTI documents

Kochi: The Kerala Government had imposed a social security cess of Rs 2 each on petrol and diesel from April 1 in a bid to shore up the flagging revenues despite widespread unease among a large section of the public. Now, a Right To Information (RTI) has revealed a major discrepancy in the figures of fuel cess collected by the State Government in the April-June quarter.

(The social security cess is generally referred to as fuel cess.)

The discrepancy has been found in the documents provided by the Kerala Goods and Services Tax (GST) Department and the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), on behalf of the Finance Department, under the RTI Act.

While the IOC data stated that a sum of Rs 242.75 crore was collected during the April-June period after the State introduced a Social Security cess of Rs 2 per litre on petrol and diesel, the GST documents showed that only Rs 197.8 crore has been collected in the said period.

Now the State Government is liable to answer the major mismatch in the figures, to the tune of nearly Rs 45 crore, arrived by the two departments.

The “glaring mismatch” is clear even if one examines the monthly figures. As per the GST data, Rs 7.44 crore, Rs 84.76 crore, and 105.6 crore reached the government exchequer during the months of April, May, and June respectively. Manorama had earlier reported that there was some anomaly in the figures.

The IOC statistics, though, showed that the government collected Social Security Cess of Rs 75.95 crore, Rs 89.32 crore, and Rs 77.48 crore in April, May, and June respectively from the Public Sector Unit (PSU) Oil Marketing Companies alone. 

The government received a sum of Rs 316.15 crore towards the fuel cess till July. This doesn’t include the figures of money remitted in this regard by the private oil companies.

The discrepancy was noticed in RTI documents obtained by RTI activist Raju Vazhakkala. 

Oil companies remit the tax collected from the public, while selling fuel, to the government on a monthly basis.

The figures for the sale of petrol and diesel by the private and public companies in Kerala from April to June are as in the table below:

Month                 Petrol (in cr litre)             Diesel (in cr litre)
April                            20.22                                   21.76
May                             22.55                                   27.08
June                             20.42                                   23.19
July                              19.81                                   21.55