Fuel price soars again: Petrol up 11 paise at Rs 88.29 per litre in Mumbai, diesel sees 11th consecutive price hike

There is no respite from fuel price hikes. Petrol and diesel prices shot up across all metros on Tuesday with an 11 paise jump in petrol while diesel went up Rs 2.50 per litre to wipe out all of the Rs 2.50 per litre cut in rates announced earlier this month through excise duty cut and oil company subsidy. The government had, with effect from 5 October, cut excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 1.50 per litre and asked state-owned oil firms to subsidise the fuel by another Re 1 a litre. However, the retail selling price continued to rise on subsequent days. [caption id=“attachment_5320661” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representative image. Reuters[/caption] On Tuesday, petrol was retailing at Delhi at Rs 82.83, Mumbai Rs 88.29, Chennai Rs 86.10 and in Kolkata at Rs 84.65 per litre respectively. Diesel was being sold in Delhi at Rs 75.69, Mumbai Rs 79.35, in Chennai at Rs 80.04, Kolkata Rs 77.54 per litre respectively. After the Centre cut excise duty by Rs 1.50 per litre and asked PSU oil firms to subsidise fuel by Re 1, Maharashtra and Gujarat governments were among the first to announce a matching Rs 2.50 cut. They were later joined by Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana Assam, Uttarakhand, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Bihar with similar moves. Jammu and Kashmir, which is under governor’s rule, too reduced tax on the two fuel. Maharashtra, however, reduced VAT only on petrol and not on diesel.  

  Even before the excise duty cut, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh had last month reduced VAT to cushion consumers for a spate of price increases. The reduction in excise duty, only the second in four years of BJP-led NDA rule, will dent Central government revenues by Rs 10,500 crore and was aimed at cooling retail prices that had shot up to an all-time high. The BJP-government at the centre had raised excise duty on petrol by Rs 11.77 a litre and that on diesel by Rs 13.47 a litre in nine instalments between November 2014 and January 2016 to shore up finances as global oil prices fell, but then cut the tax just once in October last year by Rs 2 a litre. Prior to 4 October cut, petrol price had risen by Rs 6.86 a litre and diesel by Rs 6.73 since mid-August.