New Delhi: Fuel prices in India doesn’t seem to stop rising any time soon as the rates were once again hiked for the second straight day on Thursday after already breaching the ₹100-mark in all metro cities.
In the sixth hike of this month, petrol got costlier by 35 paise in the national capital, while diesel rose by 9 paise, according to price notification by the oil retailers.
The latest revision has taken the cost of petrol to ₹100.56 per litre in Delhi while diesel is currently at ₹89.62. In Mumbai, petrol is being sold at ₹106.59 per litre, whereas diesel has reached ₹97.18 per litre.
The national capital had on Wednesday become the last of the metro cities to see auto fuel rising above the ₹100-a-litre mark. It has crossed the psychological mark in at least 10 state capitals so far.
Bhopal had in May become the first city to breach the ₹100-mark in petrol prices. It was followed by Jaipur, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Patna and Thiruvananthapuram saw petrol retailing above ₹100 in the last week of June whereas Chennai and Bhubaneshwar joined the list in the first week of July. Kolkata also saw petrol prices climbing over ₹100 per litre on Wednesday.
Fuel prices differ from state to state depending on the incidence of local taxes such as value-added tax (VAT) and freight charges.
As much as 55% of the retail selling price of petrol in Delhi is made up of taxes ( ₹32.90 a litre excise duty collected by the central government and ₹22.80 VAT levied by the state government).
Half of the diesel price is made up of taxes ( ₹31.80 central excise and ₹13.04 state VAT).
Here are the latest rates in big cities:
Thursday’s was the 38th hike in fuel prices since 4 May, when oil companies revised the rates after observing an 18-day hiatus during assembly elections in five states and a UT.
Since then, the price of petrol has risen by ₹10.16 per litre and diesel by ₹8.83 a litre.
The rally in domestic prices is said to be on the back of international Brent crude rates as India is dependent upon imports for 85% of its oil needs.