Industry Odisha Bureau, Sep 25: India’s active LPG customer base dips by 6.2 million, ending a decade of expansion. Supply constraints, customer verification and PNG migration all played a part. Ujjwala also records a decline.
LPG Growth Hits a Reversal
For more than a decade, India’s cooking gas market moved in one direction. That run has now broken.
Active domestic LPG customers stood at 333.9 million at the start of April. By early September, oil ministry data put the figure at 327.7 million. The reduction of about 6.2 million marks a 1% contraction this fiscal year. Several developments coincided with the fall.
Supply Pressure Meets Customer Verification
The first is tighter LPG supply. Before the Iran war, the Gulf region provided about 90% of India’s LPG imports. The conflict has since constrained those supplies. Oil marketing companies responded by halting fresh household LPG connections.
The second is a database clean-up. Industry executives say companies used Aadhaar-based biometric verification. The checks targeted inactive customers and multiple connections within families. They also flagged customers with access to piped natural gas. A removed record therefore does not always mean a household stopped using LPG.
Ujjwala Scheme Also Records a Decline
The Ujjwala scheme for poor households was not spared. Its customer base fell by about 0.6 million to 105.7 million. That decline sits within the wider 6.2 million contraction. The data do not show why each customer left the active rolls.
PNG Connections Absorb Part of the Shift
Government policy has also nudged LPG users towards natural gas where pipelines exist. City gas companies added nearly 0.6 million PNG customers until July this fiscal year. That took total PNG connections to 17.5 million.
Billed PNG customers offer a clearer measure of active use. They rose by 1.06 million to 10.7 million. PNG migration explains roughly one-sixth of the 6.2 million LPG decline.
A Decade of Expanding LPG Growth Changes Direction
The reversal stands out against a long period of expansion. India had 148.6 million active LPG customers at the start of 2015-16. That base more than doubled to 333.9 million by this fiscal year’s start.
Accelerating adoption drove growth of 11.9% to 19.6% in the four years to 2018-19. Growth later eased to around 5% or less as the base expanded.
Regional LPG Customer Base Shows Uneven Declines
The losses were not evenly spread. Southern India shed the most LPG households, at 2.63 million. Western India lost 1.62 million, while eastern India lost 0.34 million.
Northern India still held the largest base in early September, at 99.3 million. Southern India followed at 79.8 million. Western and eastern India stood at 68.3 million and 67.5 million respectively.
A Market in Transition
The dip reflects several overlapping forces rather than one cause. Supply pressure slowed new connections. Verification trimmed inactive and duplicate records. PNG drew away a smaller share of households.
India’s household gas market is changing shape, not simply shrinking. Whether growth resumes will depend on how these forces evolve.
