December 06, 2004
 

Why is petrol priced so ridiculously? It costs 40.89 in Calcutta, 37.84 in Delhi, 41.25 in Madras, 43.23 in Bombay and 44.21 in Bangalore currently.

Why cant it be in nice round numbers, like say 43 or 45 Rs/litre. Currently if I need to fill up my bike tank with two litres of petrol [in Bangalore], I need to dish out Rs 88.42. I obviously dont have 42 paise of change with me, so it conveniently gets rounded up to 88.50. Instead of 2 litres, to avoid hassles of having change, if I choose to fill up petrol worth Rs. 100, I dont get petrol for the full Rs. 100. I get it for Rs 99.91. Who pockets the 8 paise in the earlier case and 9 paise in this case? Obviously the dealer.

If the various governments want to ensure that they get revenue in the form of taxes etc., why cant they make sure that products are priced in such a manner that there is no chance of intermediaries pocketing small change? Mind you, we're talking of 8-9 paise per customer. Add up this amount across all the cities, across all the petrol pumps and for all the customers who use it, and we could be talking a fairly big sum.

Labels: petrol