Union government decided to appoint Suresh Prabhu Committee to review gas pricing formula

Union government on 24 July 2014 decided to appoint Suresh Prabhu Committee to review the gas pricing formula. Suresh Prabhu is a former Union Power Minister under National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The other members of the Committee will be Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President and Chief Executive of Centre for Policy Research and Bibek Debroy of the same institute.

The decision to appoint Suresh Prabhu Committee comes one month after the Union government decided to put on hold the revision of natural gas price. The Union Cabinet on 25 June 2014 had deferred the implementation of the C Rangarajan Committee's pricing formula till 30 September 2014 for conducting a comprehensive review of the whole issue.

The implementation of the Rangrajan pricing formula would have doubled current gas rates to at least 8.4 US dollars per million British thermal unit raising power cost by over 2 rupees per unit, urea production cost by 6228 rupees per tonne and piped gas by 8.50 rupees per kg.

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