Mumbai, Oct 13 (IANS): On the eve of Dussehra, the Maharashtra Gas Ltd (MGL) on Wednesday hiked the prices of domestic PNG and vehicular CNG - for the second time in a week, with effect from midnight (October 13/14).

The MGL announced a price increase of Rs 2.30/kg for Compressed Natural Gas and Rs 1.11/SCM for domestic Piped Natural Gas.

With this, the revised, all-inclusive final prices of CNG used by vehicles will go up from Rs 54.57/kg to Rs 57.54/kg (including taxes).

Similarly, the rates of domestic PNG in and around Mumbai will shoot up from Rs 32.67/SCM to Rs 33.93/SCM (Slab 1) and from Rs 38.27/SCM to Rs 39.53/SCM (Slab 2), respectively.

The fresh hike will hit around 1.60 million PNG consumers and over 800,000 CNG customers in and around Mumbai ahead of the festivals of Dussehra and Diwali.

The MGL has justified the hike on grounds that from October 1, the Central government has increased the prices of domestically produced gas by a whopping 62 per cent.

Besides, re-gasified LNG prices are at historic high levels, and this combination led to a significant increase in the cost of gas being procured by MGL.

"Being a customer-focused company, the MGL has always tried to maintain price stability for its CNG and domestic PNG customers. However, since the increase in gas price is large, MGL has decided to progressively recover such increased gas cost," said the gas service provider.

The MGL assured that despite the upward revision, CNG offers a saving of about 64 per cent and 43 per cent compared with petrol-diesel, at current price levels, in Mumbai.

Similarly, MGL's domestic PNG offers 33 per cent saving in comparison to the current price of domestic LPG coupled with convenience, safety, reliability and environmental friendliness to consumers.