Agencies
New Delhi, May 18: Get ready to pay more for petrol and diesel. The Committee of Secretaries has recommended petrol and diesel price hike by Rs 4 per litre.
That is not all. Cooking gas is also going to get more expensive. The panel, which consists of the finance and petroleum secretaries, has recommended hiking of LPG prices by Rs 50 per cylinder.
The hike seems indispensable after the Finance Ministry rejected the Left's proposal for a duty cut.
Earlier, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora had proposed slashing of customs duty on crude oil, but the Finance Ministry was not in favour of any duty cut.
The Finance Ministry rejected the Petroleum Ministry's proposal, saying that the hike is indispensable in the backdrop of skyrocketing global crude oil prices.
The Petroleum Ministry made out a strong case for increasing the fuel prices by up to Rs 10.43 a litre in petrol and Rs 114.45 per cylinder of cooking gas to save oil companies from a massive financial loss despite strong opposition from the Left parties.
They instead suggested a cut in duties and a review of the CNG pricing policy in order to mitigate the impact of the surging international oil prices.
In a presentation made to the Left leaders, the Petroleum Ministry said the price of petrol needs to be raised by Rs 9.33 per litre, diesel by Rs 10.43 per litre, kerosene by Rs 17.16 per litre and LPG by Rs 114.45 per cylinder if prices are to be brought in parity with imported costs.
The Petroleum Ministry said without the price hike, oil companies would suffer a revenue loss of Rs 73,512 crore in 2006-07 fiscal.
Reliance Industries (RIL) has already announced an increase in the price of petrol by Rs 2 a litre. The new price comes into effect at over 1,200 retail outlets of RIL across the country. While adding the local tax of different states, the price increase would be Rs 2.52- 2.92 per litre.
RIL has, however, spared diesel from any price increase. It may be noted that RIL sells about 2.5 times more fuel per outlet than its public sector competitors.