RIL may hike Gujarat fuel prices

In line with the public sector oil companies' decision, Reliance Industries (RIL) is also likely to hike its petrol and diesel prices from Monday.

Sources say that the private sector major's decision comes in the wake of the public sector oil companies' dealers association putting pressuring on RIL to fall in line.

The implementation of VAT in the state from April 1 prompted the oil companies to increase the prices of petrol and diesel by 95 paise and 78 paise, respectively.

Meanwhile, RIL to had hiked prices but only by 22 paise and 15 paise for petrol and diesel, respectively. RIL officials were not available for comments.

In a meeting held on Saturday between the Federation of Gujarat Petroleum Dealers Association, various oil companies and RIL, an official of RIL declared that the company will match the retail selling price of petrol and diesel with other retail outlets in the state, sources said.

Owing to the price variation, 1,550-odd retailers witnessed a loss of around 10 per cent on average in the state, said Arvind Thakkar, secretary of the association.

"As everyone was aware of the price hike, customers had their tanks full on March 31 due to which the loss to other retailers was not very high," said Thakkar.

However, for retailers like Kiran Patel, owner of a petrol pump in Anand, the loss was as high as 65 per cent.

"On an average, we sell around 3000 litre per day of petrol. But on the very first day of the rise in prices, we sold less than 1,400 litre of petrol," said Patel, while claiming that RIL petrol pumps lured their customers.