The Union Government’s Tax Collections on petrol and diesel jumped by 88% to Rs 3.35 lakh crore in the year to March 31, after excise duty was raised to a record high. Excise duty on petrol was hiked from Rs 19.98 per litre to Rs 32.9 last year to recover gain arising from international oil prices plunging to multi-year low as pandemic gulped demand.
The same on diesel was raised to Rs 31.8 from Rs 15.83 a litre, according to a written reply to a question given by the Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Rameswar Teli in the Lok Sabha. This led to excise collections on petrol and diesel jumping to Rs 3.35 lakh crore in 2020-21 (April 2020 to March 2021), from Rs 1.78 lakh crore a year back.
Collections would have been higher but for fuel sales falling due to lockdown and other restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the corona virus pandemic, which muted economic activity and stalled mobility. In 2018-19, excise collections on petrol and diesel were Rs 2.13 lakh crore.
The Total Excise collection in FY21 was Rs 3.89 lakh crore.
Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Rameswar Teli said that “The impact of the increase in prices of petrol and diesel can be seen in their impact on inflationary trend measured by Wholesale Price Index (WPI. The weightage of petrol, diesel and LPG in the WPI index is 1.60%, 3.10% and 0.64% respectively.
He further said during the current fiscal 2021-22, petrol price has been increased on 39 occasions and diesel on 36. The price of petrol has been cut on one occasion during this period and that of diesel on two occasions.
There was no change in the remaining days.
In the previous 2020-21, petrol price was hiked on 76 occasions and cut on 10 while diesel rates went up 73 times and were reduced on 24 occasions.
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