Kathmandu, January 1

The state-owned Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has said that fuel prices are likely to go down further in the domestic market owing to the constant fall in their prices in the international market.

Sushil Bhattarai, acting deputy managing director of NOC, informed that the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has reduced fuel prices for NOC for the first half of January and preparation is underway to slash prices in the domestic market. “We are currently calculating fuel prices. As they have become cheaper, NOC will soon adjust domestic prices accordingly,” he said.

NOC has already reduced fuel price twice in the last one month — on December 3 and 18 — owing to falling crude oil price in the global market. On December 18, NOC had reduced the price of petrol by two rupees per litre to Rs 110, while price of diesel and kerosene had been slashed by two rupees per litre each to Rs 97 per litre each.

The global crude oil price has been constantly falling since the last two months. Though average price of crude oil was above $70 per barrel in October, its price has dropped to almost $53 per barrel at present.

However, this significant fall in price of crude oil has not benefited the Nepali consumers as NOC has reduced the price of petrol and

diesel by only four rupees per litre in the last one month. Meanwhile, the falling crude oil price in the global market has provided much needed relief to NOC. Though NOC had been incurring a monthly loss of over Rs one billion a month ago, the corporation currently books monthly profit of more than Rs 1.5 billion.

Under the existing rate, NOC is booking profit of Rs 13 per litre on petrol and nine rupees per litre each on diesel and kerosene. However, the corporation incurs a loss of Rs 284 on each cylinder of liquefied petroleum gas, popularly known as cooking gas.