Petrol price up by Rs. 4 per litre: complications due to daily price fixing
Posted on: 05/Sep/2017 11:23:20 AM
The vehicle drivers have become discontent as the petrol price has gone up by Rs. 4 over the last 2.5 months since the implementation of the daily price revision of petrol has been implemented.
Earlier, the authority to fix petrol and diesel prices was with the central government. This authority was passed on to Indian Oil, Bharath and Hindustan Petroleum, the public sector concerns, over 3 years ago. These companies, during the initial period, revised the petrol/diesel prices once a month. Later, they changed over to twice a month. There was no appreciable increase in the petrol/diesel prices.
However, from 16th June, these companies adopted the system of revising petrol/diesel prices on a daily basis. Hence, the price of petrol/diesel has been increasing steadily.
On 16th June, petrol was sold at Rs. 68.02 per litre and diesel, at Rs. 57.41 per litre in the Chennai Metro City.
As on today (Tuesday, 5th September), petrol is sold at Rs. 72.25 per litre, and diesel, at 60.49 per litre. So, in the last two-and-a-half months, the price of petrol has gone up by Rs. 4.23 and that of diesel, by Rs. 3.08.
The vehicle drivers expressed that all these public sector undertakings operate with the single target of making the profit just like private sector organisations. This is why, even when the prices of crude oil in the international market is lower, the price of petrol/diesel in the domestic market has been going up.
Further, there is no regular information regarding the daily price revisions. So, it is high time that the central government should once again take over the responsibility of the petrol/diesel price revision from these public sector undertakings.
