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India Macro and Policy | June 9, 2026
Brent crude has eased to around $94–95 per barrel from a May 2026 peak of over $113, and the West Asia conflict that drove the spike shows signs of de-escalation. Yet petrol in Delhi is Rs 102.12 per litre, the highest since May 2022, and diesel is Rs 95.20. For millions of Indian consumers who watched crude fall and expected the pump price to follow, this gap feels like arithmetic fraud. It is not fraud. It is something more structural: a five-layer price mechanism in which the international crude price is just one of five variables, and not always the most important one. This article dissects each layer: the rupee depreciation multiplier, the OMC under-recovery backlog, the government’s excise architecture, the freeze-and-hike political cycle, and the GST exclusion. It explains why India’s fuel prices will remain sticky even as global oil retreats further.
Table of Contents
- Part I: How India Actually Prices Petrol and Diesel The five-layer stack from crude to pump, and why crude is only one of them
- Part II: The Rupee Multiplier: The Hidden Cost Nobody Talks About How a ~10% depreciation in FY26 added Rs 6–8 per litre to effective import cost
- Part III: The Under-Recovery Time Bomb Four years of frozen prices, Rs 1,000 crore/day losses, and the Rs 7.50 catch-up hike
- Part IV: The Tax Architecture That Never Moves Down Excise duty asymmetry, VAT-on-VAT compounding, and the GST exclusion that costs consumers
- Part V: The Political Freeze Cycle: How Elections Kill Price Signals Election-driven freezes, the November 2021 to March 2022 suppression cycle, and the deferred pain mechanism
- Part VI: A Critical Assessment: Who Is Really Paying for Cheap Crude? The fiscal capture argument, OMC equity destruction, and the case for GST inclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Rs 102.12
Petrol price per litre in Delhi as of late May 2026, after four hikes totalling Rs 7.38 per litre in 10 days.
~55%
Share of the retail petrol price in Delhi that is taxes: central excise, road cess, and state VAT combined. The crude cost is roughly 35–40%.
Rs 1,000 cr
Estimated daily under-recovery of OMCs at the peak of the West Asia crude shock, before the May hikes began.
~7%
Rupee depreciation against the US dollar in 2026, which independently added Rs 6–8 per litre to the effective cost of imported crude in rupee terms.
Part IHow India Actually Prices Petrol and Diesel
The Pump Price Is Not the Crude Price
The single most persistent misconception in Indian energy discourse is that petrol and diesel prices should move in direct proportion to Brent crude. When crude falls from $113 to $94, consumers expect petrol to drop by a corresponding amount. The expectation is intuitive, but it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how Indian fuel prices are actually built.
The retail price of petrol in India is constructed in five sequential layers. The first layer is the crude cost itself: the landed cost of imported crude in rupees per barrel, divided by the refinery yield to derive a per-litre figure. This number is sensitive to both the dollar price of Brent and the rupee-dollar exchange rate, which means a weaker rupee can make crude more expensive in rupee terms even when dollar prices fall. The second layer is the refinery transfer price, which is the price at which refineries sell product to oil marketing companies after accounting for refining margins, freight, and insurance. The third layer is the central excise duty, a flat per-litre levy set by the Union government that does not move automatically with crude prices. The fourth layer is the dealer margin, a relatively small component that is periodically revised. The fifth and largest variable layer is the state Value Added Tax, which is charged as a percentage of the cumulative sum of all the layers below it, meaning that even when the layers below are unchanged, a policy decision at any layer cascades upward.
| Layer | Component | Approximate Rs/Litre (Delhi, May 2026) | Moves With Crude? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crude cost + refining + freight | ~38–42 | Yes, but in rupees, not dollars |
| 2 | OMC marketing margin (or under-recovery recovery) | ~2–4 (variable) | Inversely: rises when crude is high |
| 3 | Central excise duty + road cess | ~19.90 (base rate) | No: flat per litre, set by government |
| 4 | Dealer commission | ~3.87 | No: periodically fixed |
| 5 | State VAT (Delhi: 19.4% on sum of 1–4) | ~15–17 | Proportionally: rises with total before it |
The key structural insight is that layers 3 and 4 are entirely inelastic to global oil prices. Layer 5 is elastic but only upward in practice, as states have rarely voluntarily cut VAT when crude falls, because fuel taxes are a major revenue line for state governments. The result is a floor beneath pump prices that crude oil alone cannot move. Even if Brent were to fall to $60, the excise and VAT components would keep pump prices above Rs 80 per litre in most states.
Petrol and diesel are outside the GST net entirely. This is the structural fact that matters most. Under the Goods and Services Tax framework that governs most of India’s economy, a central rate applies uniformly and states receive a share through the council. Petroleum products were excluded from GST at the time of its 2017 introduction because states were unwilling to surrender their most lucrative tax handle. The GST Council has the power to bring petrol and diesel under GST at any time, but has never done so. The consequence is that India has 28 different effective tax rates on petrol, one for each state, and no mechanism exists to automatically pass global crude price movements to consumers in a transparent, formula-driven way.
Part IIThe Rupee Multiplier: The Hidden Cost Nobody Talks About
India Pays for Oil in Dollars, Not Rupees
Crude oil is settled globally in US dollars. When Indian oil marketing companies import crude, they buy dollars in the foreign exchange market to pay their suppliers. This creates a direct linkage between the rupee-dollar rate and the effective cost of crude in Indian terms, independent of what happens to the dollar price of Brent on the ICE exchange in London.
In FY26 (April 2025 to March 2026), the rupee depreciated approximately 10 percent against the US dollar on a point-to-point basis, falling from around Rs 85.4 at the start of April 2025 to approximately Rs 94.8 by end-March 2026. In the early months of FY27, the West Asia conflict triggered a further slide to a record low of Rs 96.96 before the RBI’s interventions provided partial recovery. These numbers translate directly into oil import costs. A barrel of Brent crude at $94 costs Indian OMCs approximately Rs 9,024 at Rs 96 per dollar, whereas the same barrel would have cost only Rs 8,028 at Rs 85.4, the rate that prevailed at the start of FY26. That is a difference of Rs 996 per barrel, or approximately Rs 6 per litre, purely from currency movement with no change in the dollar price of crude.
The double-compression of 2026: The West Asia conflict produced both effects simultaneously and in the same direction. It pushed Brent crude higher in dollar terms (from the low $80s before the conflict to over $113 at the peak), and it simultaneously weakened the rupee by triggering FPI capital outflows, widening India’s current account deficit through higher import costs, and shifting global investor sentiment toward safe-haven dollar assets. The result was a compounding burden: India was paying more dollars per barrel and more rupees per dollar at the same time. An OMC buying crude in late April 2026 faced an effective rupee cost per litre roughly 40–45 percent higher than an OMC buying crude in January 2025, even though the dollar oil price had risen only 30 percent. The rupee leg accounted for the difference.
Why Crude Falling to $94 Is Not the Relief It Appears
Today, Brent has retreated from its $113 peak to approximately $94–95. In dollar terms, that is a 17 percent decline from the peak. But the rupee has not recovered to its pre-conflict level. At an exchange rate of approximately Rs 95–96 per dollar, crude at $95 still costs Indian OMCs roughly Rs 9,025–9,120 per barrel. Compare this to October 2024, when Brent was also around $75–80 per barrel but the rupee was at approximately Rs 83–84: the effective rupee cost per barrel then was Rs 6,225–6,720. The same global price environment in dollar terms would produce a dramatically different pump price outcome if the rupee were at its pre-depreciation level. Currency is not a footnote to the fuel price story. It is one of the two principal drivers, and it is one that almost never features in the political conversation about why petrol is expensive.
Part IIIThe Under-Recovery Time Bomb
Four Years of Frozen Prices and the Bill That Finally Arrived
Between May 2022 and May 2026, India’s state-owned oil marketing companies, namely Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum, and Hindustan Petroleum, did not raise retail petrol and diesel prices in any meaningful way despite significant fluctuations in both global crude prices and the rupee. This freeze was not accidental. It was a deliberate policy choice, sustained across multiple state election cycles and reinforced by the central government’s unwillingness to allow inflationary fuel price increases to undermine its macroeconomic management narrative.
The arithmetic consequence of selling fuel below cost is called under-recovery: the gap between what it costs the OMC to deliver a litre of fuel to a pump and the price at which it is mandated to sell it. When Brent crude climbed above $100 in early 2026 following the West Asia escalation, and the rupee simultaneously weakened past Rs 90, OMC under-recoveries were estimated at approximately Rs 10 per litre on petrol and Rs 13 per litre on diesel. With combined daily sales of roughly 8–10 crore litres across all three OMCs, the sector was absorbing losses estimated at approximately Rs 1,000 crore per day at the height of the crisis. These losses were being funded by depleting cash reserves, suspending dividend payments, and borrowing against future revenue.
The fiscal firewall that was not built: The government declined to provide OMCs with direct fiscal support to cover under-recoveries, repeating a stance that contrasts sharply with the oil bond approach used in the 2000s and the direct subsidy transfers of the 2010s. The Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum confirmed publicly in May 2026 that the government did not plan to extend financial support to OMCs for losses incurred. This left the companies with no option other than to eventually raise retail prices, and to raise them sharply in a compressed window, producing the consumer shock that results when four years of deferred arithmetic is settled in ten days.
The Catch-Up Hike Sequence and Why It Is Not Over
On May 15, 2026, the OMC dam broke. Indian Oil raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 3 per litre across all metros, the first significant hike in approximately four years. A further 90 paise hike followed on May 19. Two additional revisions brought the cumulative increase to approximately Rs 7.38 per litre for petrol in Delhi by late May, moving the price from Rs 94.74 to Rs 102.12. Diesel saw a parallel movement from Rs 87.67 to approximately Rs 95.20. Government officials confirmed that even after these hikes, under-recoveries continued. At crude prices in the $105 to $110 range, OMC marketing losses on petrol were estimated at approximately Rs 14 per litre and on diesel at approximately Rs 18 per litre, based on long-term average crack spreads, making the cumulative Rs 7.38 hike only a partial correction.
-
May 15, 2026First hike in ~4 years: Rs 3/litre
OMC dam breaks after daily losses of ~Rs 1,000 crore during the West Asia crude spike. Delhi petrol moves from Rs 94.74 to Rs 97.77.
-
May 19, 2026Second hike: Rs 0.90/litre
Losses estimated at ~Rs 500 crore/day after hike. At crude of $105–$110, marketing losses still ~Rs 14/litre on petrol and ~Rs 18/litre on diesel based on crack spread estimates.
-
May 21–25, 2026Third and fourth revisions: ~Rs 3.48/litre cumulative
Petrol in Delhi crosses Rs 100, then settles at Rs 102.12. CNG crosses Rs 80/kg in NCR for the first time in history. Four hikes in 10 days is the fastest revision cycle in years.
-
Post-May 27, 2026Central excise revised: Petrol Rs 3/litre, Diesel Rs 10/litre
Government adjusts excise duty, a tactical revenue management move as crude softens from peak. Retail prices not cut immediately; excise revision absorbed into OMC margins.
The critical point is that the May hike sequence was a catch-up, not a new equilibrium. If crude had been allowed to pass through to retail prices in real time since 2022, prices would have risen gradually over four years and come down again when crude eased. Instead, the suppressed price was held flat through the low-crude period of 2023–24 (when consumers got a windfall they did not pay for) and then corrected upward abruptly when the 2026 shock arrived. The consumer perceived a sudden, large increase. What actually happened was the belated billing of costs that had been deferred across the political cycle.
Part IVThe Tax Architecture That Never Moves Down
A Structural Asymmetry in Excise Management
Between November 2014 and January 2016, the central government raised excise duty on petrol by Rs 11.77 per litre and on diesel by Rs 13.47 per litre across nine instalments, pocketing the consumer dividend from the 2014–2016 global oil price collapse. In November 2021, when pump prices became politically untenable ahead of major state elections, the government cut excise duty by Rs 5 per litre on petrol and Rs 10 per litre on diesel. The 2022 Ukraine shock prompted a further cut of Rs 8 and Rs 6 per litre in May 2022. Then, in April 2025, with global crude crashing to a four-year low of $63 due to trade war fears, the government again hiked excise duty by Rs 2 per litre on both fuels, this time explicitly stating the hike would not be passed on to consumers, because crude had fallen enough to absorb it.
The pattern across twelve years of excise management reveals an unmistakable asymmetry. When crude falls, the government raises excise duty to capture the consumer benefit for the exchequer. When crude rises, the government either holds excise flat (forcing OMCs to absorb losses) or cuts it marginally as a political gesture without fully offsetting the crude price increase. The consumer’s share of any crude price reduction is thus almost never the full reduction, as a portion is always captured by the state.
The VAT-on-VAT compounding problem: State VAT is not levied on the crude cost alone. It is calculated as a percentage of the sum of the crude cost, the OMC margin, and the central excise duty. This means that when the central government raises excise duty, the state’s VAT revenue automatically increases without the state doing anything. And when central excise is cut, state revenues fall proportionally. This interdependency creates a systemic disincentive for states to reduce their own VAT rates: any relief they grant comes partly at the cost of their share of the excise-inclusive base. The mathematical result is that a Rs 1 cut in the central excise duty on petrol in Delhi produces a pump price reduction of approximately Rs 1.19, not Rs 1, once the VAT cascade is accounted for. And conversely, a Rs 1 hike in excise produces a Rs 1.19 increase at the pump.
The GST Exclusion: The Reform That Would Change Everything
The single most analytically important feature of India’s fuel tax architecture is the exclusion of petroleum products from the Goods and Services Tax. Under GST, the maximum rate on any product is 28 percent, and rates are set uniformly across the country by the GST Council. If petrol and diesel were brought under GST at the 28 percent rate, the highest slab, the total effective tax incidence on fuel would be significantly lower than the current combined central-plus-state tax burden, which exceeds 55 percent of the retail price in most cities. More importantly, it would make the tax structure uniform, transparent, and predictable across all states, eliminating the competitive distortion that currently exists between states with low VAT and those with high VAT.
Every Finance Minister since 2017 has been asked whether petroleum products will be brought under GST. Every Finance Minister has deferred the question, citing the need for state government consensus in the GST Council. States are reluctant for a simple reason: petroleum VAT is one of their largest own-revenue lines, and the GST compensation mechanism that was supposed to protect state revenues was itself dismantled in 2022. In the absence of a political agreement, fuel will remain outside GST, and the structurally high and asymmetric tax regime will persist regardless of where crude trades.
Part VThe Political Freeze Cycle: How Elections Kill Price Signals
When the Market Is Switched Off
India theoretically operates a dynamic fuel pricing system introduced in June 2017, under which petrol and diesel prices are revised daily at 6 AM based on a rolling 15-day average of international crude prices and the rupee exchange rate. In practice, this system has been overridden repeatedly. Ahead of the five state assembly elections in early 2022, including Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Manipur, prices were held frozen from November 4, 2021, through to late March 2022, a period of nearly five months during which crude costs surged past $100 per barrel. Following the May 2022 excise duty cut, retail prices were again largely held flat and did not see a meaningful upward revision for approximately three more years. The May 2026 hike cycle came after a period of approximately four years in which the dynamic pricing mechanism operated only in name.
The political economy of fuel pricing in India is not difficult to understand. Petrol and diesel prices are among the most psychologically salient economic variables in the average Indian household’s experience. A headline petrol price above Rs 100 per litre in Delhi is a news story. A petrol price at Rs 97 is not. Election campaign teams understand that visible pump price increases suppress incumbent party vote share, particularly in urban and semi-urban constituencies where commuter costs are significant. The freeze-and-hike cycle is not a conspiracy. It is a rational response to the incentive structure created by first-past-the-post electoral politics in a country where fuel prices are a political indicator.
The cost of suppression is always eventually paid: The deferred pain mechanism means consumers never actually escape the crude price cycle. They experience it differently: as a sudden, large shock rather than a gradual adjustment. The May 2026 four-hike sequence was more economically disruptive and more inflationary than a steady pass-through would have been. A Rs 7.50 increase in fuel costs in ten days forces logistics companies, transporters, and agricultural input suppliers to simultaneously reprice their services. A Rs 7.50 increase spread over two years barely registers in month-to-month inflation data. The political management of fuel prices thus trades short-term visibility for higher eventual economic disruption, a trade that is rational for election winners but imposes real costs on the economy.
Part VIA Critical Assessment: Who Is Really Paying for Cheap Crude?
The Fiscal Capture of Global Oil Price Windfalls
A critical reading of India’s fuel price history since 2014 reveals a consistent pattern: when global crude prices fall, a large fraction of the consumer benefit is captured by the central and state governments through excise and VAT increases. When crude prices rise, some of the consumer cost is deferred through OMC under-recoveries, which are eventually repaid either by the government (through oil bonds or subsidies) or by consumers (through catch-up price hikes). The net effect is that the Indian government has consistently extracted fiscal rent from the petroleum pricing system regardless of whether crude is rising or falling, and it has largely avoided bearing the political cost of making that extraction transparent.
Between 2014 and 2019, the government collected an estimated additional Rs 10 lakh crore in excise revenue from petroleum products, above what it would have collected at 2014 tax rates, during a period when global crude fell from above $100 to below $50 per barrel. These revenues funded the central government’s fiscal consolidation and capital expenditure programs. Had even a portion of these windfalls been passed to consumers, India’s pump prices in 2024–2025 would have been Rs 15–20 per litre lower than they were, and the damage from the 2026 crude spike would have been absorbed from a lower base.
The OMC equity destruction problem: The prolonged 2022–2026 price freeze was not free. The three listed state-owned OMCs, namely Indian Oil, BPCL, and HPCL, saw their balance sheets materially weakened. HPCL in particular reported losses in multiple quarters during the freeze period as it was forced to sell fuel below cost. Market capitalisation across the three companies declined significantly, reducing the value of government equity and forcing the OMCs to reduce capital expenditure on refinery maintenance, pipeline infrastructure, and the energy transition investments they are supposed to be making. The under-recovery subsidy that the government chose not to pay explicitly was paid implicitly, through the erosion of shareholder value in government-owned companies. This transfer never appears in the fiscal deficit.
What Would GST Inclusion Actually Change?
If petrol and diesel were brought under GST at the 28 percent rate, the effective tax incidence on a litre of petrol in Delhi would fall from approximately 55 percent of the retail price to approximately 28 percent. At current costs, this could in theory reduce the retail price by Rs 20–25 per litre. The revenues foregone by the central government and the states combined would need to be reconciled through the GST compensation framework, which would require a political agreement that has eluded successive Finance Commissions and GST Councils.
The more important effect of GST inclusion would be automatic price pass-through. Under GST, pump prices would reflect changes in crude costs and the rupee rate in real time, eliminating both the under-recovery mechanism and the freeze-and-hike political cycle. Consumers would see smaller, more frequent adjustments rather than large, infrequent shocks. Inflation management would be easier because fuel’s contribution to CPI would be a continuous, forecastable variable rather than a step-function shock that arrives once every political cycle.
The reform that would align India’s fuel market with its peers: Most OECD economies and several large emerging markets either include petroleum in their uniform consumption tax frameworks or operate formula-based, politically insulated pricing mechanisms. Singapore, South Korea, and Australia price fuel through formula systems with defined pass-through rules. China operates a government-set price that is adjusted on a formulaic schedule. In India, the combination of GST exclusion, discretionary excise management, and political freeze cycles produces an opaque, volatile pricing environment that discourages efficient consumption decisions, distorts the incentive to invest in fuel efficiency and electric vehicles, and systematically misleads consumers about the true cost of energy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not automatically, and not by the full amount implied by the crude reduction. Whether pump prices fall depends on three separate decisions: whether the OMCs choose to pass the lower crude cost through to retail prices (which they may use instead to recover accumulated under-recoveries from the 2026 spike), whether the central government raises excise duty to capture part of the consumer benefit (as it has done every time crude has fallen significantly since 2014), and whether state governments reduce their VAT rates (historically rare). If all three actors behave as they have in the past, a fall in Brent to $80 could produce a pump price reduction of Rs 3–6 per litre at best, with the rest captured by the exchequer or retained as OMC margin recovery. The rupee exchange rate also matters: a sustained recovery of the rupee toward Rs 85–87 per dollar would independently reduce import costs and could contribute to a larger reduction.
Historically, diesel was subsidised in India because it is the fuel of freight transport, agriculture, and public bus services, and subsidising diesel was seen as subsidising inflation control and food security. The government fully deregulated diesel pricing in October 2014, and since then, diesel and petrol prices have moved independently based on OMC marketing decisions and state VAT rates. In states with high VAT on diesel, some of which levy higher percentage VAT on diesel than on petrol, diesel can now cost more than petrol per litre at the pump. The central excise duty on diesel remains lower than on petrol (reflecting the historical subsidy philosophy), but this advantage has been more than offset in high-VAT states by the percentage-based structure of the state levy. Maharashtra and Telangana are examples where diesel has at various points traded close to or above petrol.
Under-recovery is the difference between the price at which an OMC can sell a litre of fuel in the market at international parity (what the fuel would cost if India had a freely importing private market) and the price at which it is required to sell at the pump. It is a real economic loss, not an accounting fiction, because the OMC is buying crude at market prices and selling the refined product below cost recovery. The loss is borne by the company’s equity, its borrowing capacity, and its ability to invest in capacity maintenance. During the 2022–2026 price freeze, OMCs were not compensated for these under-recoveries by the government, unlike in earlier decades when “oil bonds” were issued. The cumulative uncompensated under-recovery over the freeze period has been estimated in the range of Rs 40,000–60,000 crore across the three listed OMCs, a sum that weakened their balance sheets and contributed to the urgency of the May 2026 hike sequence.
India’s effective tax burden on petrol, approximately 50 to 55 percent of the retail price, is high by emerging market standards but comparable to some European economies, where fuel taxes are also used as a climate and revenue instrument. The key difference is transparency and predictability. In the UK, Germany, and France, fuel taxes are a known, stable component of a formula-driven retail price, and consumers and businesses can plan around them. In India, the tax component is opaque (bundled within a retail price that is set by OMCs rather than published as a formula), variable (subject to arbitrary excise changes at any time without parliamentary approval, since excise changes can be made by executive notification), and distributed across 29 different state VAT regimes. By comparison, Singapore’s fuel excise is a flat, publicly known per-litre duty. The unpredictability of India’s fuel tax management is arguably more economically damaging than the absolute level of taxation.
The economic case for GST inclusion is strong. It would create uniform pricing across states, eliminate the freeze-and-hike cycle, enable automatic cost pass-through, and cap the effective tax rate at 28 percent, reducing the consumer burden in most states. The political obstacle is the revenue impact on state governments, for whom petroleum VAT contributes between 15 and 25 percent of their own-tax revenue in many states. Any GST inclusion would require states to accept a lower revenue share unless compensated through a revised formula under the Goods and Services Tax (Compensation to States) mechanism. The GST compensation cess for states was originally intended to last only five years and was extended through 2026; it is unlikely to be extended further. Without a credible compensation mechanism, states have little incentive to surrender their most flexible and lucrative tax handle. GST inclusion is also unlikely in an election year, as any near-term pump price increase from formula adjustments would be attributed to the reform. The reform is necessary, politically understandable why it has not happened, and unlikely to occur before 2028 at the earliest.
The Price You See Is Not the Price of Oil
The question that the Indian fuel consumer asks, why is petrol still expensive if crude has fallen, is answerable, but the answer requires dismantling a popular misconception that crude prices alone determine what you pay at the pump. They do not. The rupee exchange rate, the accumulated under-recovery backlog of the OMCs, the discretionary excise architecture of the central government, the VAT-on-VAT compounding of state taxes, and the political freeze cycle that prevents market signals from reaching consumers in real time: these five factors collectively ensure that pump prices are structurally higher, more volatile, and less responsive to downward crude movements than the global oil market would otherwise imply.
The current moment, with Brent at $94–95 and easing, the rupee stabilising near Rs 95, the OMCs beginning to recover their under-recovery losses through the May hike cycle, offers a genuine opportunity for structural reform. A modest cut in central excise duty to reflect the crude relief would signal fiscal restraint while providing consumer relief. A political commitment to GST inclusion, even if deferred, would begin to set expectations for a more transparent regime. And a statutory bar on extended OMC price freezes, requiring any freeze longer than 30 days to be accompanied by explicit government compensation, would prevent the deferred-pain mechanism from accumulating into the kind of Rs 7.50 shock in ten days that the May 2026 episode delivered.
None of these reforms is technically difficult. All of them are politically costly in the short run. The history of India’s fuel pricing suggests that the short-run political cost will continue to be preferred over the long-run economic benefit, until an episode sufficiently damaging to OMC solvency, consumer trust, or inflation management makes the status quo more expensive than the reform. Whether the May 2026 episode is that threshold moment remains to be seen.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and is current as of June 9, 2026. All figures are drawn from publicly available primary sources including the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), official OMC pricing data, and GST Council records. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment or business decisions.
