Diesel now costlier than petrol in India: 18 price hikes in 18 days

The fuel prices have seen another hike in India and with the latest revision, the price of the diesel fuel has now become costlier than the petrol fuel. The hike of Wednesday is the 18th straight rise in the diesel price prices. The state-owned oil companies started updating the prices daily after a 12-week pause due to the COVID-19 related lockdown across India.

The price of the diesel is now Rs 79.88 per litre while the price of petrol remains unchanged at Rs 79.40 per litre. The new price is effective from 6 AM on Wednesday. In the past 18 days, the price of petrol has been increased by Rs 9.41 per litre and the price of diesel has been increased by Rs 9.58 per litre in the national capital. The regular trend of petrol more expensive than diesel continues in the other metropolitan cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.

The price of the fuel across India has seen an increase daily after the 82-day break. State-owned oil companies Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum restarted the daily revision of the prices depending on the reviews on June 7. The fuel prices in India are determined through various factors. Mostly the daily prices depend on crude oil price and forex rates. The price also varies in different states and union territories due to the local taxes and Value Added Tax (VAT).

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It should be noted that internationally, the price of crude oil has dropped and continue to fall on Wednesday. The demand for fuel dropped drastically in India due to the lockdown but slowly the sales are coming back to normal.

Even in other states, the price of diesel is almost similar to petrol. Since the transportation industry uses diesel fuel the most, the prices of other goods and vegetables are expected to rise due to the higher fuel price. Also, the demand for diesel cars is expected to diminish since the diesel cars are priced higher than the petrol ones and now the similar fuel cost will not give any benefit to the diesel car owners.

Since diesel fuel is very important to the transportation industry, it remained priced well below the petrol fuel for decades. In fact, this is the first time that the price of diesel fuel is higher than the petrol fuel in India.

It is not known if the fuel price will keep on increasing in the coming days but since the price of the crude oil is going down in the global markets, Indian motorists can expect from respite from these daily hikes in fuel prices.

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