Petrol price to rise by Rs 2.5, diesel by Rs 2.3 after FM raises tax
Petrol price will be hiked by over Rs 2.5 per litre and diesel by more than Rs 2.3 after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Friday raised taxes on the fuels to part-fund her Budget for 2019-20.Sitharaman raised excise duty and road and infrastructure cess on the auto fuels by Rs 2 per litre each to raise over Rs 28,000 crore.Post considering local sales tax or value added tax (VAT), which is charged after adding central excise duty on base price, the increase in petrol price would be over Rs 2.5 per litre and that on diesel would be Rs 2.3.On Friday, a litre of petrol costs Rs 70.51 in Delhi and Rs 76.15 in Mumbai. Diesel is priced at Rs 64.33 a litre in Delhi and Rs 67.40 per litre in Mumbai.Also, the finance minister has levied Re 1 per tonne customs or import duty on crude oil. India imports more than 220 million tonnes of crude oil; and the new duty will give the government Rs 22 crore additionally.At present, the government does not levy any customs duty on crude oil. Only a Rs 50 per tonne national calamity contingent duty (NCCD) is charged.”Crude prices have softened from their highs. This gives me a room to review excise duty and cess on petrol and diesel. I propose to increase Special Additional Excise duty and Road and Infrastructure Cess each by Rs two a litre on petrol and diesel,” she said in her budget speech.Petrol currently attracts a total excise duty of Rs 17.98 per litre (Rs 2.98 basic excise duty, Rs 7 special additional excise duty and Rs 8 road and infrastructure cess).On diesel, a total of Rs 13.83 per litre excise duty is charged (Rs 4.83 basic excise duty, Rs 1 special additional excise duty and Rs 8 road and infrastructure cess).
