Petrol, diesel prices hit the highest

January 24, 2018 Hot from the Oven Valli Sarvani No comments

The prices of petrol and diesel jumped up yesterday. Petrol prices hit the highest since 2014 when BJP government came to power. It is ₹72.38 per litre in Delhi.

The prices of diesel jumped up to a record high to ₹63.20 per litre.

The prices have been raised by ₹3.31 per litre from the middle of December month.

The prices of petrol and diesel in Mumbai are the most expensive in the country. It is over ₹80 for petrol and ₹67.30 for diesel including sales tax and VAT.

The state owned oil companies state that the rates have risen ₹4.86 per litre from mid-December.

Now, oil ministry has to cut excise duty on these to bring down prices. It sought the finance ministry in this regard.

The recommendations have been forwarded to Finance Minister seeking their consideration to cut excise duty in the Union Budget which will be presented in the Parliament next week.

The excise duty is levied by the central government at ₹19.48 and ₹15.33 per litre on petrol and diesel respectively.

The VAT is ₹15.39 on petrol and ₹9.32 on diesel in Delhi.

The upsurge in the prices of petrol and diesel is due to the rise in their prices globally.

The excise duty had been raised by the BJP government nine times between November 2014 and January 2016 whenever global oil prices had plunged. But, the tax was cut only once in October last year by ₹2 per litre when oil prices jumped up globally.

The oil companies adopted a daily price revision from June 16. Since then, the rates have only been increasing except once in the beginning.

Though consumers hope that the dynamic price mechanism would help them gain, it is actually looting their pockets.

The oil companies and government are stating different reasons for this. But, the citizens want the prices to be slashed and are waiting for the consideration of the government.

Image credit: Image by David ROUMANET from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)