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"Yes, we will cut prices if crude prices stabilise for sometime between USD 50 and 60 per barrel," he said in New Delhi.
The Government had last week raised petrol and diesel prices citing spike in international crude oil prices to USD 70 a barrel.
International rates have eased since. The basket of crude oil India buys was at USD 61.58 a barrel yesterday but the average for July was USD 65.34 per barrel. The July average was certainly lower than USD 69.12 a barrel average price of Indian basket of crude for June.
Deora said the price rise was unavoidable as India was dependent on imported crude oil to meet 75 per cent of its domestic oil needs. Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum were projected to lose Rs 4,870 crore in revenues every month on selling petrol, diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene below the cost.
"To cover this (revenue loss), the retail prices were required to be increased by Rs 6.94 per litre on petrol, Rs 4.11 a litre on diesel, Rs 96.68 per LPG cylinder and Rs 16.01 per litre on kerosene," Deora said.
"However, the Government increased the price of petrol only by Rs 4 per litre and of diesel by Rs 2 a litre."
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Subsidised kerosene and cooking gas is a good idea and necessary. however at present there is rampant black marketing and misuse of the concession. Govt should consider immediately measure to curb this tendency.Probably 1.Restrict number of gas ceylender per family per annum .or in the alternative they can consider giving cash subsidy per family so that they can buy cooking gas in open market.If these two items are properly handled then probably there should not be any difficulty in making fuel price market oriented.Duties and vat sales tax matter should be sorted out so that burden of these items is minimal.
An expert committee should be appointed to study the actual price of POL at every price of Crude in USD/Barrel giving a comparative table with market value (Petrol/Diesel/LPG) so that the Public could know the factual position. It is very difficult to believe the Petroleum Minister as he seems always favouring the Oil giants of India. I doubt the Fin Ministry supports to this formula, may be to gain more tax from the public. Also the Govt should disclose the ways of booking of crude from the crude Oil market/Companies. These things should be published in the media to make analysis by the Public.
National elections are over, and none in sight. Why should prices be brought down? We shall try to remember people (voters) after say FOUR years. The statement that "Oil companies are losing thousands and thousands of crores" is simply wrong. Let us see the published annual accounts of the major oil marketing companies in India, such as Indian Oil, BPCL, HPCL for the past THREE years. Extremely high rates of taxation is the real villain and not the "International" price.
Govt. will roll back the fuel price, if and only if election will be approaching