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Fuel prices hiked

Octane now Tk 38, petrol Tk 36

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
The government yesterday raised the price of octane by Tk 3 and petrol by Tk 1 a litre, keeping the diesel and kerosene prices unchanged. Octane and petrol constitute 10 percent of the petroleum products consumed in the country.
An energy ministry source said the price of octane now stands at Tk 38 and petrol at Tk 36. The new price regime came into effect from yesterday.
The price difference between petrol and octane is now Tk 2, which had been nil since May 24 when the government raised the price of petrol by Tk 2 to make it equal to Tk 35 of octane.
A high official of the ministry said, after levelling petrol's price with octane's, the consumption of octane, which has to be imported, rose drastically.
"We import octane but petrol is refined locally. Import of octane had been on the rise, as rich people started to use octane as it cost the same as petrol," Adviser to Energy Ministry Mahmudur Rahman told The Daily Star last night.
As a result, many a local refinery was on the verge of closure. He felt
keeping the prices of octane and petrol the same was a wrong experiment.
The present adjustment will affect the rich, not the poor, the adviser said, adding octane in India cost equivalent to Tk 68 and petrol Tk 64 yesterday.
With yesterday's price adjust-
ment, the price of petrol has seen four rises since the present government came to office. In the same period octane price was increased thrice, diesel four times and kerosene five. Though oil price had been raised last May, the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) lost some Tk 3,000 crore in
the last fiscal year.
An energy ministry source said the government has not made any decision about increasing the prices of diesel and kerosene for the time being.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have been insisting that the government increase the petroleum prices. Even after the price hike in last May, the multilateral donors kept on hammering at another rise.
Earlier on Monday, Finance
Minister Saifur Rahman had hinted at the fresh hike in petroleum prices
to check depletion of foreign
exchange reserve. "Our [forex]
reserve is under serious pressure," Saifur told reporters after a meeting of the Cabinet Purchase Committee.
"In the last six months we had to spend over 500 million dollars for oil imports. This is huge," the minister said.
He avoided a direct reply to a question whether the price of petroleum would go up once again, but said, "In India the price per litre of petrol is 62 taka and diesel 32 taka. You are living a comfortable life in Bangladesh."
"We are incurring loss of thousands of crores of taka in oil purchase due to high import costs and low sales prices. The BPC is in a pretty bad shape. We cannot remain indifferent to this situation for long," he added.
Mahmudur Rahman, who was present at the meeting, said, "We have not decided about petroleum prices yet, but the way the prices are increasing [in the international market] we may be compelled to think about raising them in the domestic market."
After yesterday's sudden increase in fuel prices, the still unaware consumers locked in altercations with fuel pump staffs at various points in the city.