Fuel price hike may not be good news for all; however, it brought some relief to oil retailing companies like Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Reliance Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum, who’ve been incurring huge losses due to subsidies in domestic crude oil prices that have belied the parallel global price rise.
“Prices of petrol and diesel have been raised for the first time in 20 months to ease losses at state-run retailers, who are squeezed by a surge in crude oil prices and have to sell fuels cheaply,” Murli Deora, the union minister of petroleum and natural gas, stated today.
The government has raised the price of petrol by two rupees a litre and diesel by one rupee a litre, and this will be effective from midnight today.
Earlier, Indiaretailing had reported about fuel majors including IOC and Reliance Petroleum condemning the ministry’s failure to take any decision on revising the fuel prices.
India’s last fuel price increase was in June 2006, when retail petrol prices went up by 9.2 per cent and diesel by 6.6 per cent.
