NEW DELHI: The Union Budget 2019-20 is likely to renew the focus on the NDA government's flagship Ujjwala scheme with the aim of increasing access to cooking gas, or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), to all the country's households before the year-end.Official sources here said that as part of his Budget speech, the Finance Minister may first propose to complete the targeted 80 million connections under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in first 100 days of the government. The LPG connection is provided in the name of the female member of the family.The sources said that along with increasing the targeted connections in PMUY, the Budget may allocate an additional Rs 2,000-3,000 crore for the scheme to complete the coverage of 100 per cent households.Launched in May 2016, the PMUY was initially aimed at providing clean cooking fuel to 50 million women from poor households classified as eligible over a period of three years. For this, a separate subsidy plan has already been worked out under the existing direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme.The average LPG cylinder refill rate under Ujjwala is a pathetic 3 per annum while the national average stands close to seven refills in a year.A Petroleum Ministry study shows that the high cost of refills for a 14.2 kg cylinder is one of the main reasons why lower number of LPG cylinders were being used by BPL families. With 5 kg cylinders, refills can be had at one third the price of a regular cylinder. This will make it easier for families to increase the year-round use of gas connections given under Ujjwala.

Source: Economic Times June 10, 2019 14:26 UTC