[Quoter]

Many folks have written above that reducing corporate tax rate will not lead to higher demand and hence it is a wrong move for the economy. The fact is corporate tax reduction was never done to increase consumer demand in the first place, so the two should never be linked. The entire objective of corporate tax reduction was to bring it on par with the corporate tax rates in competing economies to attract foreign companies for setting up manufacturing in India.

A similar argument can be given for Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme being rolled out for different sectors. The objective is not to increase domestic consumption, but to attract foreign companies to set up manufacturing plants in India instead of just importing for the Indian market.

The initial signs from above two initiatives have been encouraging with Made in India (Assembled in India for now) mobiles being sold even outside India. Instead of moving back from such initiatives, more such steps are required in areas such as land cost, electricity cost etc. to make domestic manufacturing competitive.

The unfortunate reality in a globalised world is that companies will relocate to whichever country offers best incentives. Individuals can't do that. Hence whether we like it or not, global businesses will always get more incentives than individuals or local businesses. For all the cry about government helping big businesses, it is imperative to do that if you want to be globally competitive, else we can become an insular economy of the 60's.

[airbus]

Today's rates in Bengaluru.

Diesel: Rs. 81.76
Petrol: Rs. 89.85
Xtra Premium Petrol: Rs. 92.73

Today I broke all previous records and paid Rs. 4271.14 for a full tank of diesel. Only solace is that due to work from home, driving is limited.

[slayer23]

I went down to Shell in Rajajinagar today. Regular Petrol was 95.40 and V power their premium one was 104.xx

It’s actually been about 4 months since I went to a Shell outlet, but this was really hard hitting!

[saikarthik]

I accidentally stumbled upon this video. It's a great sum up and statistics about fuel prices, their reasons and comparisons with other countries in a neutral way.

https://youtu.be/3w21tdfp-_s

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by saikarthik

I accidentally stumbled upon this video. It's a great sum up and statistics about fuel prices, their reasons and comparisons with other countries in a neutral way.

Err.. isn't he trying to justify the high prices? Using all kinds of stats or figures.

Comparing Indian pump prices to that of Western EU, Japan, South Korea & China? China is apparently a "poor" country like India and their price of 75 being close to India, makes Indian prices seem OK?

Nice!

[saikarthik]

Originally Posted by Dry Ice

Err.. isn't he trying to justify the high prices? Using all kinds of stats or figures.

Comparing Indian pump prices to that of Western EU, Japan, South Korea & China? China is apparently a "poor" country like India and their price of 75 being close to India, makes Indian prices seem OK?

Nice!

Absolutely no! I think the video is neutral with no bias. He bashes the government for taking the middleclass for granted if I recollect. He goes onto say China is 5-6 times richer than India.

I feel in my opinion the people with unbiased statements (talking about the video) feel heat from both extremes.

[ottocycle]

Paid 84.14 per litre yesterday in Hyderabad.

Didn't loose sleep on increasing prices because I filled only for 500 bucks.

[Gansan]

We can cry hoarse all we want, but so long as demand is not affected prices will not come down. They may reduce a couple of rupees now and then, but increase again. The pandemic has increased demand for fuel. So many people have switched from public transport and buy new vehicles, mainly two wheelers. I now see an occasional EV two wheeler on the road, but wonder why more people are switching to them. Their current range and speed are more than sufficient for most people.

One need not replace vehicles by EV specifically for petrol price. That will be uneconomical. But if one is in the market for a new vehicle, EV should definitely be considered, especially two wheelers.

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by saikarthik

Absolutely no! I think the video is neutral with no bias. He bashes the government for taking the middleclass for granted if I recollect. He goes onto say China is 5-6 times richer than India.

I feel in my opinion the people with unbiased statements (talking about the video) feel heat from both extremes.

The only unbiased things are the numbers.

Take a look at today's split. We are paying 53 bucks tax on a product which costs 30. This is the only stat that should matter, not what China or South Korea or EU chooses to charge its citizens.

[GrammarNazi]

Lockdown dried up demand for fuel (& thereby tax revenues), there was still a (seemingly short-term) slowdown even after it ended which has reduced consumption. So, despite the lower crude prices, the incidence of tax with the revenue targets are being recovered from a smaller set of people.

My understanding is that since the fiscal deficit is abnormally high, the government may be doing this in order to avoid being forced to devaluing the currency (which many lobbies are proposinbg in order to make it attractive to invest into India), hence higher taxes on fuel are being used to generate revenue from consumers who seem to have a more direct impact on national resources, those set of fuel consumers were smaller in numbers during the past few months.

IMO as the economy has started moving again, the base set of consumers will soon come back to normal and fuel prices would stabilise to a lower rate over the next year (so long as international crude prices do not increase).

Even if fuel demand is halved, cartelised supply chain would simply double prices. If the OPECs want your money, the quantity of fuel may not matter too much. This is why many countries are moving to energy independence via full electrification of transportation, and not hybrid-technology.

[carboy]

Originally Posted by GrammarNazi

My understanding is that since the fiscal deficit is abnormally high, the government may be doing this in order to avoid being forced to devaluing the currency (which many lobbies are proposinbg in order to make it attractive to invest into India), hence higher taxes on fuel are being used to generate revenue from consumers who seem to have a more direct impact on national resources, those set of fuel consumers were smaller in numbers during the past few months.

But hasn't fuel taxes been high for almost 7 years now? Even when oil was at it's lowest, fuel prices were not really low at the pump, right? Every time oil prices went down, the fuel taxes were adjusted to make sure we don't really gain much at the pump.

[ABHI_1512]

At the cost of sounding repetitive, here is an pictorial representation of the grand robbery that is happening in the name of fuel price.



Call it whatever, the truth is, no one in the higher echelons of power is bothered about this absurdity. We fight for things as trivial as a parking ticket if they are unjust. Heck, we even fight if someone takes even a rupee more from us for parking at designated areas.

And here we are, we know how much the product costs in actual and yet we are paying such abnormal amounts of tax wilfully. Wonder how the country ran when fuel was subsidised since these days we are made to believe that every penny of tax from fuels is building the nation and is the reason for massive infrastructure development and what not !!

P.S- Picture sourced from Twitter and belongs to BusinessToday.

[KiloAlpha]

Originally Posted by ABHI_1512

At the cost of sounding repetitive, here is an pictorial representation of the grand robbery that is happening in the name of fuel price.
...

If we overlay the INR-USD exchange rates on this chart, it will be much more informative, given that we import almost all our crude oil.

In April 2002, the exchange rate was 48, so price of crude per barrel in INR terms was Rs.1200. As of today, with the exchange rate at 73, the price of crude per barrel in INR is Rs.4680. Today, crude oil costs 3.9 times what it was in April 2002.

If all taxation were to be in %age terms and rates were constant, then we ought to be paying Rs.103.5 per litre for petrol today.

[ABHI_1512]

Originally Posted by KiloAlpha

If we overlay the INR-USD exchange rates on this chart, it will be much more informative, given that we import almost all our crude oil.

In April 2002, the exchange rate was 48, so price of crude per barrel in INR terms was Rs.1200. As of today, with the exchange rate at 73, the price of crude per barrel in INR is Rs.4680. Today, crude oil costs 3.9 times what it was in April 2002.

If all taxation was to be ad valorem and rates were constant, then we ought to be paying Rs.103.5 per litre for petrol today.

When you compare, please consider the highest price of crude as well instead of quoting the price from 2002 !!

In July 2008, the price of crude was around $132 and the exchange rate of rupee was around ₹43, so by that math in rupee value, the price of per barrel of crude comes to around ₹ 5676. As of today, with the exchange rate of 73 and crude price at around $59, the per barrel cost is around ₹ 4310.

So, the pump prices are still around 20-25 % more !! And mind you, in 2008, the fuel prices were still subsidised


When the deregulation of prices took place, the common idea was to give our oil companies respite and to a certain extent to common people like us as well. But if the government itself is hell bent on taking money through the back door instead of letting people benefit from low crude prices then there is nothing to do but watch !!

The duties on oil have been repeatedly raised despite the crude prices being consistently low after the highs of $130. We never got the benefit of low crude prices at all. All we got was excuse hikes and duties

[carboy]

Originally Posted by KiloAlpha

If we overlay the INR-USD exchange rates on this chart, it will be much more informative, given that we import almost all our crude oil.

In April 2002, the exchange rate was 48, so price of crude per barrel in INR terms was Rs.1200. As of today, with the exchange rate at 73, the price of crude per barrel in INR is Rs.4680. Today, crude oil costs 3.9 times what it was in April 2002.

If all taxation were to be in %age terms and rates were constant, then we ought to be paying Rs.103.5 per litre for petrol today.

In May 2012, petrol price was around Rs 75 per litre & there were fierce protests all over the country. Politicians were doing Andolans & Dharna all over the country protesting against fuel price.

Then Oil was at 100$ a barrel & 1$ = Rs. 56 - i.e. 5600 Rs per barrel of oil & petrol at the pump was Rs 75.

Currently oil is at 60$ a barrel & 1$ = Rs 76 i.e. 4380 Rs per barrel of oil & petrol at the pump is at Rs.90

So currently oil barrel is 21% cheaper than then, but petrol at the pump is 18% costlier. That tells you about the current loot as compared to a time when there were protests all over the country but there are no protests now.