New Delhi: A day after the latest hike of Rs 1.80 in the petrol prices, the Indian Oil Corporation on Friday justified the move saying that no entity could provide products on loss.
Addressing a press conference, IOC chairman R S Butola said that though the firm understood that the price increases were steep, there was a situation before them.
Pointing that the oil marketing companies had suffered losses of Rs 2300 crore in 2010-11, Butola said that they were not compensated by the government.
He further said that the company did not plan any rollback in the prices.
However, Butola said that they might cut down on prices the moment they saw a respite from the losses.
“We have chosen the option of continuing to provide the product with a price increase. The moment we see a respite, we will cut down on prices,” he said.
Butola also blamed rupee depreciation, claiming that it made crude imports costlier.
"The rupee has dipped from Rs 46.29 to a dollar at the time of the last hike (on September 16) to Rs 49.40 making oil imports costlier," said Butola.
India is 79 per cent dependent on imported oil for meeting its fuel needs.
The dip in rupee value against the US dollar necessitated a hike of Rs 2.49 per litre in petrol price, but the desired increase was moderated to Rs 1.52 a litre because of some softening in oil prices. After accounting for local sales tax or VAT, the hike in Delhi came to Rs 1.80 a litre.
"It is not true that we are making profit on petrol. On certain days, may be one or two days, when crude prices had slumped, we must have turned positive. That was a temporary phenomenon. We do not do pricing on the basis of daily trends. If that was so the prices of petrol should have been raised by Rs 2.50 a litre because on certain days in October that was the desired increase owing to rupee dipping below 50 to a dollar," Butola said.
IOC and its sister state firms Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum take average oil price and the exchange rate for the fortnight for deciding on the desired price at the retail level.
(With Additional Inputs from PTI)
Comments
0 comment