New Delhi [India], June 7 (ANI): The Indian household continues to buy cooking gas much cheaper than the household in any neighbouring country, and far below the price paid in advanced economies such as the United States, Australia and Canada, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said on Sunday, noting that a beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) pays an effective Rs 642 for a 14.2 kg cylinder, and the general consumer in Delhi Rs 942, against a cost to supply that has now risen to over Rs 1,600.

Domestic LPG prices have been increased by Rs 29 per cylinder from Sunday amid the rise in cost due to the West Asia crisis.

Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said the prices of petroleum products in India are linked to the corresponding prices in the international market.

The Government, however, continues to modulate the effective price to the consumer for domestic LPG.

Any household can buy as many cylinders as it needs at Rs 942.

A PMUY beneficiary will additionally receive the direct benefit transfer of Rs 300 a cylinder on the first four refills each year -- broadly the average annual consumption of a typical Ujjwala household, about four refills a year -- and so pays an effective Rs 642 on those refills and this support is unchanged.

Even a non-PMUY household would pay about Rs 700 below the market-linked cost of the cylinder.

Retail prices differ marginally across locations on account of distribution costs, the release said.

'What the household does not bear the brunt of is the several hundred rupees a cylinder which the Government is bearing.

Through a period of sharp international cost increases, that burden has been absorbed upstream rather than passed to the consumer,' the release said.

The price per 14.2 kg cylinder in India (Ujjwala, effective after revision) stands at Rs 642.

The price of a 14.2 kg cylinder comes to Rs 1046 in Pakistan, Rs 1207 in Nepal, about Rs 1,225 in Bangladesh, Rs 1241 in Sri Lanka and about Rs 1,755 in the United States, about Rs 1,765 in Australia and about Rs 2,411 in Canada.

The commercial cylinder used by hotels and businesses is revised automatically every month, because its price is a direct pass-through of the international benchmark but the domestic cooking cylinder is not, the release said.

India used to import 60 per cent of its LPG requirements, and the landed cost of that import tracks the Saudi Contract Price (CP) that Saudi Aramco sets at the start of each month.

This is an external price over which the Indian consumer has no control.

Through the West Asia disruption the benchmark moved sharply higher.

Expressed as the 50:50 propane-butane blend used for India's LPG, the Saudi CP for LPG stood at about USD 543 a tonne in February, before the disruption.

Following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in late February, the April contract price -- the first set after the disruption tightened Mideast Gulf exports -- rose to USD 775 a tonne, with propane at USD 750 and butane at USD 800, and has since edged up further to USD 790 a tonne in June.

The blended LPG benchmark has thus risen by about 46% since the pre-crisis February level.

The cost of the imported molecule rose with it.

The release said that following the June contract price, the cost of supplying a 14.2 kg cylinder, were it priced on an import-linked basis, has risen to over Rs 1,600.

The under-recovery now absorbed on each domestic cylinder is about Rs 700.

The scale of this is visible in the fully market-priced commercial cylinder: the 19 kg cylinder used by hotels and restaurants sells in Delhi at Rs 3,113.50, about Rs 164 a kg, after five increases during the West Asia crisis.

The domestic household, by contrast, pays about 66 a kg after the revision.

Commercial gas carries a higher rate of tax and larger margins, so it sits above the household's cost-reflective....