CNG Prices Raised By Mahanagar Gas

On Saturday, state-run Mahanagar Gas announced a marginal increase of one rupee in the price of compressed natural gas (CNG).

"To partially recover fixed costs in the face of lower sales due to the pandemic, and higher landing cost of gas due to the depreciation of the rupee against the dollar, we are constrained to increase the selling of CNG by Re 1 effective today," MGL said in a statement.

It said that accordingly, the revised selling price of the fuel will be Rs 48.95 per kg in Mumbai.

Even after the above revision, CNG offers attractive savings of about 60 percent and 39 percent compared to petrol and diesel, respectively, at the current price levels in the megapolis, it said.

In comparison, the petrol price in Mumbai is Rs 87.19 per litre on Saturday, while diesel was priced at Rs 79.97. Diesel prices were raised across cities on 25 July and petrol rates have remained unchanged for a few weeks. These two fuel prices are revised on a daily basis by state-owned oil marketers based on international crude oil prices but of late, there has been a surge due to hike in central and state government taxes.

Most recently, on 20 July, the Andhra Pradesh government hiked VAT (value added tax) on petrol and diesel sold in the state to mop up additional annual revenue of Rs 600 crore that was affected by fall in sales due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In May, the central government had increased the excise duty on per litre of petrol by Rs 10 and per litre of diesel by Rs 13.