Chart of the day: Can India curtail oil import bill?

In the last eight years, the country's crude import jumped 78% while petroleum products exports went up a 230% from FY05 to FY12 as per the statistics provided by PPAC. Reliance Industries ( RIL ) has been the biggest contributor to it.

Experts attribute this kind of growth to the Jamnagar refinery owned by RIL which is considered the largest in the world with an installed capacity of 668,000 barrels per day.

Even though the gap between exports and imports is still big, rising exports in last eight years helped reduce in the space considerably. From the above analysis, it can be infered that oil is not the only cause for the rupee to fall. Also in the current scenario, Reliance Industries is allowed to export only certain petroleum products. The government should direct the Oil Ministry to take some serious measures to boost petroleum products export thereby curtailing the net oil import bill in the long run.

See the chart below