Petroleum products should come under GST: IOCL Chairman

Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) Chairman, Sanjiv Singh on Tuesday stressed on bringing petroleum products under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in order to provide relief to common people from the ongoing spurt in fuel prices across the nation.

"There is no directive from the government as far as the retail price is concerned. The retail prices are driven by the last 15 days based on the global prices of the products. The government should bring all the petroleum products under GST - we will continue to stress upon it," ANI quoting IOCL Chairman said here.

Currently, crude oil, petrol, diesel, jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel (ATF) are not included in GST, which kicked off on July 1 last year.

"Whatever we anticipated, they international market has not been behaving that way. Looking at the current situation it's quite difficult to predict the future prices. Unfortunately, if these prices will hike with the same speed, then this will have an impact on the Indian market too," Singh said, while hinting that the hike in fuel prices might continue for some more days.

Asked whether IOCL has violated the government directive of day-to-day revision of prices of petroleum products during the recently held Karnataka elections, Singh said, "Government has given us freedom to revise prices on day to day basis, we took a call."

The petrol and diesel prices have been increased by 17 paise a litre and 21 paise per litre respectively in Delhi. The national petroleum companies have hiked the prices for the seventh day in a row.

With this, petrol prices hit a 56-month high of Rs 76.24 per litre, while diesel prices touched a record high of Rs 67.57 in the national capital.

In Madhya Pradesh's Bhopal city, the petrol price touched Rs 82.47 per litre while diesel reached at Rs 71.66 per litre.

Mumbai too is facing the brunt of fuel price hike as petrol touched Rs 84.70 per litre, while diesel hiked a record high of Rs 71.66 per litre in the metropolitan city.

Earlier, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan assured the public that the government will soon take out a solution to tackle the situation.