For the fourth year in succession PetroFed organized a senior management meet on Implications of the Union Budget 2006 for the Oil & Gas Sector on the day following the presentation of Union Budget in parliament by the Finance Minister at New Delhi in association with member company & knowledge partner PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd.  The meet was organized at the India International Centre on March 1, 2006.

It was for the first time that a similar meet was organized at Mumbai, which for logistics reasons, had to held on March 2, 2006.  It was hosted by Essar & chaired by Sh. A.N. Sinha, MD & CEO, Essar Oil.

Chairing the session at New Delhi, Sh. T.N.R. Rao, former Secretary, MoP&NG lauded the role of PetroFed in organizing the event regularly but did not find several concerns of the industry being addressed in the Budget.  Professor Sebastian Morris, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in his keynote address on ‘Sustaining High Economic Growth in India’ was optimistic on India being able to achieve double digit GDP growth provided there was adequate emphasis on demand side as well supply side and reforms undertaken in Taxes & Tariffs with subsidies being given directly to the deserving.

The Direct Tax Implications of the Union Budget on the sector were comprehensively detailed by Sh. Rahul Garg, Executive Director, PwC.  He also presented the subject at the meet at Mumbai.  The Indirect Tax Implications were explained in detail by Sh. S. Madhavan, Executive Director, PwC at New Delhi while Sh. Prashant Deshpande, Executive Director, PwC tackled the topic at Mumbai.

The industry perspective of the Budget provisions were shared by Sh. S.V. Narasimhan, Director (Finance), Indian Oil Corporation, Sh. R.S. Sharma, Director (Finance), ONGC & Sh. R.P. Sharma, President (Gas Business), RIL at New Delhi.  On the comment of  Sh. Narasimhan that the industry had not asked for notification of LPG as ‘declared goods’ which had been included in the Budget, Sh. R.P. Sharma jocularly remarked that industry had sought this concession for Natural Gas and that probably the ‘printers devil’ had replaced LNG with LPG.

At Mumbai, Dr. Siddhartha Roy, Economic Advisor, Tata Group in his keynote address on ‘Economic Landscape & the Union Budget’ provided an excellent analysis of the sectoral growth and investment in the Indian economy and was optimistic of our capacity to attain higher sustained rate of growth. After the PwC presentations on Direct & Indirect Tax implications the industry observations were shared by Sh. C. Ramulu, Director (Finance), HPCL & Sh. R. Ganapathisubramanian, Sr. VP (Commercial), RIL.  Session Chairman, Sh. A.N. Sinha brought out in his concluding remarks that the Oil & Gas sector was crucial for fuelling the Indian economy as the largest contributor to the exchequer in 2004-05 with USD 27 billion.  It was the 6th largest crude oil consumer in the world and ranked 6th in world refining capacity.  It has the world’s third largest refinery and all five Indian companies in the Fortune 500 are from the Oil & Gas sector.  The Government, he said, should therefore address itself to the concerns of this industry on priority.

Welcoming participants at the meets at New Delhi & Mumbai, Director General, PetroFed, Sh. A.K. Arora lamented the lack of inclusion of any significant benefits to the Oil & Gas Industry in the Union Budget despite PetroFed submitting every year detailed industry expectations for its healthy growth several months prior to the Budget for consideration by Government.

Each meet, at New Delhi & Mumbai was followed by an intense question and answer session where keynote speakers, PwC experts and Oil Industry experts who shared their perspective answered a barrage of questions.  Nearly 150 senior executives from the Oil & Gas and allied industry were present at each meet.

To view presentations, click here

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Sh. R.P. Sharma, President (Gas Business) RIL making his presentation.

Questions & Answer session in progress