India's fuel consumption matched economic growth rate, says Hardeep Puri

New Delhi: As the country’s economic growth is increasingly dependent on energy consumption, Union petroleum minister Hardeep Puri on Wednesday said that India’s economy was 7.7 per cent in the first six months of the current fiscal year 2023-24.

The minister’s statement came after a month when India’s GDP growth rate beat all estimates and stood at 7.6 percent for the July-September quarter. At 7.6 percent, the latest quarterly growth number is significantly higher than expectations.

“It is a generally understood fact that economic growth is increasingly dependent on energy consumption on account of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. India’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 7.7 per cent in the first six months of the current fiscal year. This growth-energy correlation is evident in India as it is now the world’s third largest energy consumer, third largest consumer of oil, third largest LPG consumer, fourth largest LNG importer, fourth largest refiner and fourth largest automobile market in the world,” Puri said at a press conference.

In October last year, Puri had stated that India is poised to reach a $4 trillion economy by the end of the year and is projected to attain a $10 trillion economy by 2030. Emphasising the significance of the growing India-US relationship on the energy sector, he had also highlighted the importance of collaboration in areas such as green energy and others to promote mutual growth.

India, the world’s third biggest oil importer and consumer, has emerged as a top buyer of sea-borne Russian oil sold at a discount after Western entities retreated following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The global markets have plenty of oil and there would be no supply constraints,” the minister said, adding that India's leadership has only one requirement that the Indian consumer gets the energy at the most economical price, without disruption and on an average India buys 1.5 million barrels per day of Russian oil.

“Oil companies have not yet complained to him about facing any problems in settling payments for oil imports. If they (Russia) don’t offer us (good) discounts why would we buy from them,” Puri said, adding that new oil producers in far flung regions are willing to offer better discounts than Russia on crude sales.

When asked about failing oil imports from Russia, he said that India’s oil imports from Russia fell due to unattractive pricing and not because of payment problems, “There is no payment problem ... It is a pure function of the price at which our refineries will buy,” Puri added.