NEW DELHI, MAY 12: The government today ruled out any hike in prices of petrol and other petroleum products despite hike in international prices, saying it would bear extra costs of imports.Asked whether the deficit arising due to the rise in international prices would be absorbed by the oil pool account, Ramamurthy said, the oil pool account was maintained well and it would be used to meet this eventuality. ``We are already maintaining the oil pool account fairly well, just to meet this kind of eventuality arising out of the rise in oil prices around the world,'' he said.Petroleum ministry sources indicated that it had already anticipated the hike in prices of crude during the current financial year in its Oil Economy Budget (OEB). Against an average import price of about 12 dollars a barrel in OEB last year, this year the ministry formulated the annual document with an anticipated import price of around 16 million dollars.Not only India was benefitted by lower than anticipated average internationalcrude prices, its import bill also came down to about 7.8 billion dollars as against an earmarking of 8.4 billion dollars due to substantially lower consumption growth than the targeted 10 per cent. With increasing refining capacity, 1999-2000 OEB has put more emphasis on import of crude rather than value added petroleum products.Sources said that India might not have to import diesel during the second half of the fiscal while imports of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (cooking gas) would also come down substantially. On the whole, India's crude imports could be up to 80 million tonnes as against 29.5 million tonnes during the first three quarters of 1998-99, sources said.India's petroleum product imports during April-December totalled 14.15 million tonnes at a cost of Rs 7,489 crore, while crude imports during this period entailed foreign exchange outgo of Rs 11,040 crore.Presently, only five petroleum products - Petrol, Diesel, LPG, Kerosene and Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) - are under the administrativeprice control, even though government decided last year to give import parity price for diesel. Petrol and ATF on the other hand cross subsidise LPG and Kerosene.Following the presentation of the Union Budget for 1999-2000, wherein government had restructured import duties as part of measures to liberalise the petroleum sector by the year 2002, prices of Petrol, LPG and Kerosene came down marginally.However, diesel prices were increased due to a cess of Re 1 per litre for road developments. The government had also increased diesel prices last month between 32 paise and 34 paise a litre in tune with uptrend in international market prices.Accordingly, its price moved up from Rs 9.94 to Rs 10.28 in the capital, from Rs 10.18 to Rs 10.52 in Calcutta, Rs 11.21 to Rs 11.60 in Mumbai and Rs 10.91 to Rs 11.27 in Chennai.
