New Delhi, May 29 (IANS): Mumbai has become the first metro city that is selling petrol at over Rs 100 per litre to consumers. Maintaining the price rise momentum, oil companies raised the price of petrol and diesel again on Saturday by 25-30 paise per litre. With this, petrol prices rose 25 paise per litre in Mumbai taking up retail price there from Rs 99.94 per litre a day earlier to Rs 100.19 per litre on Saturday.
Diesel prices in the city are also the highest among metro cities at Rs 92.17 per litre, increasing by 30 paise from the previous level on Saturday.
At over Rs 100 a litre, the petrol price in Mumbai is at the historic high level. Never before the fuel price has come even closer to reaching this mark.
But Mumbai does not have unique distinction of breaching the Rs 100 pet litre mark. Thane already reached the mark few days back while few other cities in Rajasthan (including Jaipur) Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, having the highest VAT levels on auto fuels in the country, have already been selling normal petrol for over Rs 100 a litre for the past several days.
Premium petrol prices has already crossed the Rs 100 per litre mark in the city and other parts of the country through increase in the retail rates in the month of January and February.
With price rise on Saturday, in Delhi also petrol is being sold at Rs 93.94 a litre while diesel at Rs 84.89 a litre, an increase of 26 paise and 29 paise per litre respectively over previous days price. Across the country as well Petrol and diesel prices increased on Saturday but the quantum varied depending on the level of local taxes in different states.
With Saturday's price rise, fuel prices have now increased on 15 days and remained unchanged on 14 days so far in the month of May. The 15 increases in May has taken up petrol prices by Rs 3.54 per litre in Delhi. Similarly, diesel have increased by Rs 4.17 per litre in national capital.
Under daily price revision, OMCs revise petrol and diesel prices every morning benchmarking retail fuel prices to a 15-day rolling average of global refined products' prices and dollar exchange rate. However, in a market where fuel prices need to be increased successively, oil companies this month have been holding back price rise on few days before starting the process all over again.
Earlier, IANS had reported that OMCs may begin increasing the retail price of petrol and diesel post state elections as they were incurring losses to the tune of Rs 2-3 per litre by holding the price line despite higher global crude and product prices.
With global crude prices rising again to around $70 a barrel mark, OMCs may have to keep revising prices upwards for some more time.