Fuel prices touch four-year high

Petrol and diesel prices in the city touched a four-year high on Sunday.

The price of petrol was `78.08/litre and diesel `70.16/litre, the highest since September 2014.

Fuel prices are being revised every day since June 2017. On Monday, petrol will be sold for `78.08 and diesel for `70.19. These fuel prices are higher than even international crude prices that peaked at $115 in 2014. The fuel prices started increasing from 2017.

On November 1, 2017, the petrol price in the city was `73.21 and diesel, `62.72.

By December 1, 2017, the price increased to `73.24 and `63.40 respectively.

By January 1, 2018, it increased to `74.04 and `64.81.

B y January 25, 2018, the price went up to ` 76.61 and `68.72.

By Feb ruary 1, the petrol price pea ked at `77.21 and diesel at `69.51.

After that, the prices came down slightly in March with petrol at `75.71 and diesel at `67.56 on March 1.

But towards the end of March the prices started going up again. The Centre had earlier this year sou ght a red uction in excise duty on petrol and diesel to cushion the impact of rising international oil rates, but finance minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget presented on February 1, ignored those calls.

The Centre raised excise duty nine times 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. Subsequent to that excise duty reduction, the Centre asked states to also lower VAT, but just four of them — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh — reduced rates while others didn’t.

Hyderabad: Petrol and diesel prices in the city touched a four-year high on Sunday. Subsequent to that excise duty reduction, the Centre asked states to also lower VAT, but just four of them Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, reduced rates while others including other BJPruled states did not. The TS and AP governments also did not reduce VAT. The Telugu states are among those that impose the highest VAT on petrol and diesel, at 35 and 27 per cent respectively, as VAT contributes around 60 per cent to the state’s tax revenues. State-owned oil companies IOCL, HPCL and BPCL started revising fuel prices every day since June 2017, ending the 15-year-old practice of revising rates on the 1st and 16th of every month.