Nepalis consume Rs 12.60 million worth petroleum products in an hour

Nepalis consume Rs 12.60 million worth petroleum products per hour – which is around Rs 2 million more – from a year ago, when they used to consume around Rs 10.97 million worth fuel per hour.

The consumption-led economy has imported Rs 27.23 billion worth petroleum products – the single largest import of the country against the total export receipt of Rs 23.07 billion – in the first three months of the current fiscal year 2013-14, according to the central bank.

In the same period last fiscal year 2012-13, the country had imported Rs 23.70 billion worth petroleum products

The per hour petroleum products consumption a year ago – in 2011-12 – first three months stood at Rs 8.38 million. In the first three months of the fiscal year 2011-12, the country had imported Rs 18.10 billion worth petroleum products, the central bank data revealed.

Likewise, per head consumption of petroleum products has increased to Rs 1,027.54, though, according to the latest census of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), about 64 per cent of the total 5.42 million households in the country use firewood as usual source of fuel for cooking and 21.03 per cent of the population use LPG or popularly known as cooking gas, while kerosene is used for cooking by only 1.03 per cent of the total households. "In the urban areas some 67.68 per cent of the total households use LPG as their usual fuel for cooking," it reported.

The rising number of vehicles – due to easy and cheap financing by the bank and financial institutions – and rising income, apart from scheduled power outage that has forced the industries use diesel to operate has also fuelled the petroleum consumption.

Kathmandu alone consumes 31 per cent of petroleum products imported as it operates about 100 Mega Watt of private diesel generators, according to a study.