India toppled Japan as the world's second-largest importer of liquefied petroleum gas as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pledge to provide cooking gas cylinders to the poor and wean them off polluting fuels drove up consumption.
Imports of LPG, mostly used as cooking fuel, soared 23 percent during the financial year that ended March 31 to 11 million tons, according to data from the Oil Ministry's Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell (PPAC). Japan's imports slipped 3.2 percent during the same period to 10.6 million tons, according to the Finance Ministry in Tokyo. China remains the world's top importer.
In May last year Modi's government embarked on a drive to provide free cooking gas connections to women from extremely poor households, aimed at reducing the use of polluting fuels such as wood and dried cow dung that, according to the World Health Organization, causes 1.3 million premature deaths in India every year. This push led to a record distribution of 32.5 million new cooking gas connections during the year.