People's Democracy

PETRO PRICE HIKE

CITU Charges Govt

Of Factual Dishonesty

The following is the press statement issued by the CITU on September 16, 2011

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions charges the government not only of insensitivity to people’s woes because of relentless price rise, but also of factual dishonesty to justify price rise of Rs 3.14 per  litre of petrol under the pretext of international crude oil price and rupee devaluation.

The CITU points out that on May 15 this year when the price of petrol was increased by Rs 5 per litre, the global crude oil price was hovering around 110-115 dollar/barrel. In between monthly average price was 109 dollar/barrel in June, 112 dollar/barrel in July and 106 dollar/barrel in August. Today it is 115 dollar/barrel. There is no justification of Rs 2.61/ litre hike on this account when crude price is more or less the same as in the month of May and there was no reduction in price when crude price came down. Similarly, the government’s plea that the price hike was necessary as rupee has weakened from Rs 45 to Rs 47.84 versus the dollar in last 15 days, is also hollow. In the first six months of 2008, rupee was Rs 39 to 40 versus the dollar. But petrol price was not decreased. The CITU strongly flays such factual dishonesty as a sign of intellectual disintegrity of the policy makers of the day.

The CITU urges upon the government to put an immediate halt to such jugglery of figures to justify price hike as well as its hidden agenda to deregulate the pricing of petroleum products like petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene for the benefit of the private oil companies.

The CITU demands immediate withdrawal of petrol price hike and restoration of transparent administrative pricing system, which takes into account actual cost of production, transportation and marketing of petroleum products instead of depending on speculative market price.

The CITU calls upon the government to reduce the taxes / duties instead of increasing the burden on the common man through price rise of petrol and other petroleum products which will have a cascading impact on inflation that is already reaching double digits.

The CITU calls upon the working class to mobilise and vociferously protest against the governments’ anti-people and anti-worker step of price hike in petrol.