Petroleum prices hiked again !

Citing the price hike in India, Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has, finally, hiked the prices of petroleum products. The state oil monopoly hiked petrol price by Rs 3 per litre, and Kerosene and diesel by Rs 2.50 per litre each. But it has not hiked the prices of cooking gas and aviation fuel.
The NOC has revised the prices of petroleum products upwards after it received the new price list from IOC on July 1. "Had the NOC not increased the price, it could have been incurring a loss of Rs 100 million per month, according to the new list," he added.
"With the price hike, price of petrol will be Rs 85 per litre and kerosene and diesel will cost Rs 65.50 per litre each," said Mukunda Dhungel, NOC spokesperson. "After the price hike, NOC will earn Rs 73.9 million in profit."
"The corporation was incurring a loss of Rs 1.16 billion in the current financial year," Dhungel said.
Earlier, the corporation had hiked petrol price to Rs 82 per litre and diesel — the poor man's fuel — and kerosene prices were hiked to Rs 62.50 per litre each. Then also, it had not changed the price of cooking gas. LPG costs Rs 1,250 per cylinder.
On every 1st and 15th of the English calendar month, NOC receives the new rate of diesel, kerosene and petrol from its supplier IOC. The rate of cooking gas is revised on the first of every English month according to the international market price.
According to the increased price in India since June 25, petrol and diesel were cheaper in Nepal by Rs 4.83 and Rs 2.10 per litre. "We had no option to hike to stop the back flow of the petroleum products due to open borders," Dhungel said.
For last one week, there has been a short supply of petroleum products. Though, Dhungel claims that the supply has been normalised, the supply crunch has still been experienced by the people. However, Consumer groups claim that the shortage has been created by NOC to raise the prices of petroleum products after the government turned down its loan request for Rs 1 billion.
But in the last cabinet meeting of the Madhav Kumar Nepal government, it was decided to give Rs 800 million to NOC so that it can pay its dues and supplies in the country could again become normal.
"The deep-rooted corruption in NOC created an artificial scarcity of petroleum products," said Jyoti Baniya, general secretary of the Consumers Rights Protection Forum(CRPF).
"The monopoly of NOC in petroleum products supply is repeatedly making the consumers suffer," a petroleum dealer said adding that the private sector should also be allowed to import petroleum products to create a fair market environment.