Cooking gas users may get to switch service providers

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LPG(Liquefied Petroleum Gas) acts as a driver of economic growth in most of the developing countries as well as in rural areas.

Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, and Bharat Petroleum are simultaneously developing software to bring their whole LPG business data on the same platform. The people mentioned above said on condition of namelessness cooking gas users is also able to seamlessly switch service providers soon just like they are doing with their transportable numbers, three people awake to the event said, with the govt working to bring the household gas supply business of state-owned fuel marketers on the identical platform.

According to the plan, a liquified petroleum gas (LPG) connection from Indian Oil Corp. Ltd will be transferred to Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), or the other way around. This assumes importance providing India has 291.1 million LPG customers as of 1 July.

As portability within a fuel retailer’s network is online and smooth, that’s not the case if one has to switch to a different provider. The process involves a physical surrender of the connection first and so going for a reference to the LPG distributor of another retailer, which from time to time becomes tedious and time-consuming.

“At present, portability is there within a corporation, where you’ll move from one dealer to a different. After this, there’ll be portability across companies,” the person cited above added. “A tender has been suggested to create the portability process between OMCs smoothly. It’s expected to be implemented during this year,” said a petroleum and fossil fuel ministry official, the person cited above.

“At present, OMCs allow their customers to choose the LPG distributor for cylinder refills, and it also allows the online transfer of LPG connection to a different distributor within the identical OMC,” a BPCL spokesperson said and added, “There isn’t any common LPG connection portability plan as on date. a standard database continues to be under development.”

The LPG connection portability plan comes against the backdrop of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, a government program that aims to supply free cooking gas connections to poor families, increasing India’s LPG membership to 99.5% on 1 January this year from 61.9% as of 1 April 2016.

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