India may raise retail oil prices
India is most likely to raise the retail prices of Petrol and Diesel in the coming days, unconfirmed reports say. With the Indian Crude basket price at over 125$ per barrel and with no revision in the retail prices for last several months, the India government owned oil companies are now literally cash stripped and have gone over board and borrowed lot of short term working capital funds. To avoid any full blown crisis, the Petroleum ministry is pushing for a combination of excise duty cuts, custom duty cuts and small retail price increases. Things will be clear by 5th of June 2008.