The government owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) increased petrol price by Rs 1.80 per litre. This is the 4th increase in the current financial year, because of recent deprecation in rupee which increased the cost of imported crude oil.
The prices at Indian Oil, country’s largest oil marketer, outlets already increased, whereas other two OMCs i.e. Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum will increase prices from today midnight. After hike the petrol will cost around Rs 68.64 per litre in Delhi, Rs 73.81 in Mumbai, Rs 73.15 Kolkata and Rs 72.73 in Chennai.
A senior official at Indian Oil, said “We were losing around Rs 1.50 litre,” by adding further he said “The increase of up to Rs 1.91 has been done after factoring the local levies. The increase takes care of the entire loss on petrol.”
In mid-September, OMCs has increased the prices of petrol by Rs 3.14 per liture. This hike was also because of the fall in rupee against the American dollar. In September, rupee has depreciated by 3.34%, which pushed OMCs to go for another hike in petrol price.
From the time of deregulation of petrol prices, the petrol prices have increased by 43% to Rs 68.64 per litre in Delhi. In the same period of time, the diesel price, which is still under government control as increased by only 8.37% to Rs 41.29 per liter on national capital.
However, the petrol price were decontrolled in line with the Kirit Parikh panel report, the government is yet to take decision on its suggestion of decontrolling diesel prices. Presently, the OMCs are losing around Rs 8.58 on a litre of diesel, Rs 25.66 on per litre kerosene and Rs 260.50 on a domestic LPG cylinder.