Consumption of petrol and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) dropped slightly last month as the political impasse continued to drag on, the Energy Business Department said yesterday.
Director-general Somnuk Bamrungsalee said petrol consumption edged down by 0.9% last month to an average of 22.7 million litres per day from 22.9 million a year earlier.
"Normally a high volume of petrol is used during April's long Songkran holiday because people really travel a lot. However, this year demand dropped," said Mr Somnuk.
Diesel use rose 2.16% to an average of 60.7 million litres per day from 59.4 million in the previous year because many motorists modified engines to be compatible with diesel.
This was prompted by the government maintaining the diesel price subsidy below 30 baht per litre since 2009.
LPG demand also dropped 2.37% year-on-year to 20.5 million kilogrammes per day from 20.9 million as prices were floated under a government policy to cut the price subsidy for the industrial and household sectors.
Only the transport sector saw an increase in LPG use, rising 7.5% year-on-year to an average of 5.44 million kg per day from 5.06 million.
"Motorists have avoided high-priced petrol and shifted to LPG," Mr Somnuk said, adding that more than 350,000 LPG-compatible vehicles were registered from January to April this year, compared with 808,000 the whole of last year.
Since the subsidy programme for low-income people was launched in September last year, some 270,370 people have registered and received fixed-price LPG coupons with a combined value of 69 million baht.
The department will ask the new government to restructure the subsidy price of diesel from a universal subsidy to a focus group method in an attempt to minimise the loss of state revenue.
The government scrapped the excise tax and municipality tax on diesel for a combined 5.31 baht per litre, leading to a loss of state revenue of more than 100 billion baht per year.