Agra set to go the CNG way but users wary of prices

VISHAL SHARMA
AGRA. With Agra getting ready for the opening of its first CNG filling station by the first week of April and the Agra administration making CNG fuel mandatory for school buses, automobile companies have begun an aggressive marketing campaign of their CNG vehicles among schools in the town.

Advertisements for CNG school buses from Swaraj Mazda and CNG autorickshaws from Bajaj are becoming quite frequent in the local media and the Bajaj dealerships in Agra have even begun promoting CNG autorickshaws in place of the LPG variants that have become quite popular among the local auto-drivers lately.

Sources at the Swaraj Mazda dealership in Agra said that they had been receiving a large number of queries from the local schools for CNG buses that were costing around Rs. 12 lacs per 42-seater bus. They said that there was a market for atleast 1000 school buses in Agra and since the Agra administration had given strict guidelines to the schools to stop using diesel school buses, all the school buses currently would have to be either converted into CNG or replaced by new buses.

Already, they said, the Delhi Public School had asked for 5-7 buses to be delivered by April end and a number of other schools had also placed bookings for CNG buses. To provide financial assistance to the schools for making the investment in new buses, Swaraj Mazda had even tied up with ICICI bank for providing upto 90 percent finance on CNG buses besides opening helpdesks specifically for school owners.

But while CNG vehicles have started getting good customer response in Agra, most of the local schools, that are the largest prospective buyers of CNG buses in Agra, have decided to wait till a CNG station opens in Agra, before they go in to place a booking for a new bus, also demanding for a rebate on the trade tax applicable on CNG to bring the gas prices equivalent to that in Delhi.

According to the official sources at Green Gas Ltd., the Joint Venture enterprise of IOCL and GAIL, in Agra, CNG would cost approximately Rs. 28 while in Delhi, the cost was about Rs. 18, resulting in a Rs. 10 price difference between the prices in these two cities.

Attributing this price rise to the 20 percent trade tax imposed by the Uttar Pradesh government on CNG, J.K. Singh Tewatia, Managing Director, Green Gas Ltd. said that there was no tax on CNG in Delhi and even the land for the CNG stations had been allotted at subsidized prices while there was a 20 percent trade tax imposed on CNG in UP, which, if exempted, could result in the gas prices coming down upto Rs. 23.43 per kg.

He said that the company had already requested the state government to exempt trade tax on CNG and hopefully, the tax shall be revoked soon.

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