After a day’s pause in rates, oil companies on Monday again increased the prices of diesel and petrol for the 22nd time in just over three weeks in all the metropolitan cities. As per the latest hike, the diesel and petrol were now costlier by 5 paise per litre and 13 paise a litre.
Monday’s fuel price jump has taken the cumulative increase in rates to Rs 9.17 for petrol and 11.14 per litre for diesel.
In Delhi, a litre of petrol now comes for Rs 80.43 per litre as compared to Rs 80.38 earlier. Diesel rates have been increased to Rs 80.53 per litre from Rs Rs 80.40.
In Mumbai, petrol price went up from Rs 87.14 per litre to Rs 87.19, while diesel was hiked to Rs 78.83 per litre from Rs 78.71.
In Kolkata and Chennai petrol price was at Rs 82.10 per litre and Rs 83.63 per litre respectively.
Diesel rates in these were at Rs 75.64 per litre in Kolkata and Rs 77.72 per litre in Chennai.
Rates vary from state to state depending on the incidence of local sales tax or VAT.
While the diesel rates have been hiked for the 22nd time since June 7, petrol price has been raised on 21 occasions.
There was no change in prices on Sunday.
The government on March 14 hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 3 per litre each and then again on May 5 by a record Rs 10 per litre in case of petrol and Rs 13 on diesel. The two hikes gave the government Rs 2 lakh crore in additional tax revenues.
Oil PSUs Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), instead of passing on the excise duty hikes to customers, adjusted them against the fall in the retail rates that was warranted because of fall in international oil prices to two-decade low.