Rising fuel prices: Oil bonds’ cost barely 10% of Centre’s extra revenue from fuel taxes

Is the cost of servicing the legacy oil bonds, cited by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently, a cogent reason for the Narendra Modi government not acceding to the demand for a reduction in the assorted levies on motor fuels, which have jacked up their prices to the end consumer and stoked inflation?

Well, the repayment obligations, which the oil bonds issued by the UPA government cast on the Modi 1.0 and Modi 2.0 governments, would be a substantive Rs 14.3 lakh crore lower compared with the additional net revenue to be collected by the Centre between FY15 and FY24 (the tenure of the two Modi governments), thanks to a series of tax hikes on the fuels under the Modi rule.