Customers have started to factor in the narrowing gap between petrol and diesel and the premium that needs to be paid for a diesel vehicle.
Ujjwala Yojana was launched on May 1, 2016 at Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh and has so far covered 47.3 million consumers in 715 districts
While consumers feel that petrol pinches directly, diesel hurts indirectly, as it is an input in almost all the goods and services we use.
Only 48.3 per cent of the rural households used LPG, while the figures were much higher in urban areas at 86.6 per cent, according to a NSO report.
What's driving consumers to petrol cars? Ajay Modi finds out.
The price of petrol breached a three-year high on Monday at Rs 74.50 a litre, while the price of diesel was at its highest at Rs 65.75 a litre
One of the reasons is that the retail prices are not bench-marked to crude but their respective international benchmark prices.
The Indian basket represents the price of Oman and Dubai sour grade crude.
"Under different scenarios, we see the impact of higher crude prices ranging from $25 billion to a maximum of $50 billion on the oil import bill. The increase in the oil import bill will also affect the current account deficit," economic affairs secretary S C Garg said in a conference on Friday.
For every rupee fall against the dollar, the under-recovery will increase by Rs 8,000 crore
Indian basket at 6-month low of $49.11 a bbl
India has already pipped Japan as the world's third-largest oil consumer.
The growth, however, may not indicate a major revival of economic activity.
'I have no problems with the finance ministry or with state governments treating petrol pump prices as the last resort for meeting their ambitious spending targets with very limited revenue resources.' 'But let's do away with this smokescreen of free pricing of petrol and diesel and go back to administered pricing regime,' says Dr Sudhir Bisht.
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