More than half of the retail selling price of petrol and one-third of the selling price of diesel is made up of central and state duties, Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said on Tuesday.
The cost of production of petrol is only Rs 19.58 per litre as opposed to the sale price of Rs 43.49 a litre (in Delhi), the remaining being made up of customs and excise duty and sales tax, he said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.
In Delhi, customs duty adds Rs 1.73 (or 4 per cent) to the price of a litre of petrol, while excise duty adds another Rs 14.93 (34 per cent). Local sales tax accounts for Rs 7.25 in the retail selling of Rs 43.49 for a litre of petrol.
Similarly in diesel, customs duty of Rs 1.81 (6 per cent), excise duty of Rs 5.07 (17 per cent) and sales tax of Rs 3.39 make up for 34 per cent of the Rs 30.45 a litre sale price in Delhi. The basic cost of production of diesel is only Rs 20.18 a litre.
Aiyar said the cost to produce a cylinder of LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) was Rs 261.97 and local sales tax of Rs 32.75 took the retail selling price of it to Rs 294.75, while a litre of kerosene was produced at Rs 8.70 and is sold at Rs 9.05.
To another question, Aiyar said since the end of 2003, there had been an unprecedented, sharp and spiralling increase in international oil prices. The Indian basket of crude oil touched an all-time high of $62.78 per barrel on September 1, 2005.
Against the average Indian crude basket price of $27.96 per barrel during 2003-04 and $39.21 a barrel in 2004-05, the average for November 2005 was $53.14 per barrel, he said.
