‘Secret’ of our expensive fuel

It’s a bolt from the blue, again, for Bangalore, which continues to reel every time the fuel prices are hiked. Every middle- or upper middle-class family experiences the inconvenience of reworking the household finance to ensure a semblance of savings at the end of the month.

High taxes, levies and surcharge have ensured Bangalore pays the highest per litre of fuel in India. And yet, ask a common man why this is so, and you will get a shrug or an expression of ignorance. So much for transparency!

You should not be surprised about this. Even petrol pump-owners, who get their fuel stock from Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), apparently lack the understanding about why fuel prices are the highest in Bangalore.

When the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) announced deregulating fuel prices on Friday, declaring that the upward revised prices would come into effect from midnight, calculator keys were tapped feverishly and a figure was reached at.

At midnight, many IOC-supplied petrol pumps put up the retail price of petrol at Rs57.63 per litre and diesel at Rs42.15 per litre, and put that up as the “final revised rate.” Surprisingly, when the sun was up on Saturday, the figure at the IOC-supplied petrol pumps read Rs58.09 per litre for petrol (regular unleaded) and Rs42.21 for diesel.

That jump to a second revision remains a mystery.

“We were told these would be the prices for petrol and diesel in the morning,” said a petrol pump supervisor next to Cauvery Theatre, on Saturday. “But the revised figures given to us were different last night.”

Surely, there must be a rational explanation about that second revision, which saw the prices go up further by 46paise for petrol and 6paise for diesel.

The fact that nobody who deals with motorists at the retail point is able to explain makes it all the more painful, causing a degree of suspicion on whether we are being taken for a ride. May be, may be not.

But here comes the question of transparency.

If you buy a fruit juice at a shop, somewhere on the packet you will find a list of ingredients that have gone in to prepare the fruit juice, but of course, with that unforgettable mention of “no artificial flavours.” Why can’t a similar thing be adopted at petrol pumps?

When fuel prices go up — and this is going to be a regular feature, now that the prices would be determined by the market forces — a board could be put up to explain precisely why fuel prices are so high here. And this could include a break up of taxes and levies to explain to customers why they are paying the highest in India.

That this has never been done indicates a lack of interest to know why we in Bangalore pay higher for an indispensable ingredient in our lives — fuel.

So, it remains almost a secret.