Even after deregulation of pricing, the movement of retail prices of petrol and diesel is not directly related to global crude oil prices. Taxes make up around two thirds of the petrol and diesel prices paid by consumers.
An analysis of Air India’s financials reveals that the national carrier is on the path to profitability. Strategic disinvestment at this time will prove to be suboptimal. It is shown that debt obligations of the carrier can be serviced, given its improving performance. The airline’s revenues also entail large amounts of foreign exchange inflows. With global crude oil prices expected to remain subdued, strategic disinvestment of Air India at this juncture is not desirable.
This paper undertakes an examination of the differential impact of international oil prices on domestic inflation and output growth in India under two alternative scenarios. One scenario is, when domestic fuel prices are allowed a formula-based automatic alignment with international oil prices and the second, when as per current policy, fuel prices have evolved as a consequence of revisions specified periodically by the government. The differential impact analysis has been undertaken in a structural Vector Autoregressive framework using the technique of innovation accounting.
