Some respite has come to the country hit hard by the fuel crisis after the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on Monday relaxed its restriction on the supply of petrol and increased its volume of supply to Nepal twofold.

“The restriction on the supply of the petrol has been relaxed a little. 1,957 kilolitres of petrol has been imported from India on Monday,” Kantipur Daily quoted General Manager of Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) Umesh Dahal as saying.

IOC smoothened the supply after it received a fresh payment of Rs 960 million from NOC and came two days after Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala requested India to resume normal supply of petroleum products.

But the petrol supply is still far lower than normal import volume and despite news reports that IOC would resume normal supplies of petroleum products to Nepal, it has not done it so far. What’s more, reports say that the relaxation on petrol supply has been done for a short term only.

IOC had been curtailing supply of petroleum products to Nepal by 40 percent over the past 10 days on the ground of non-payment of import bills. Nepal has yet to settle Rs 6 billion in unpaid bills with the Indian supplier. The curtailment by IOC in the supply of fuel had consumers in the Kathmandu valley queuing for hours at refilling stations for the past week.