New Delhi: The government has announced a hike in cooking gas prices, impacting household budgets. The price of a regular LPG cylinder has increased by ₹50 — rising from ₹803 to ₹853. Beneficiaries under the Ujjwala scheme will now pay ₹553 instead of ₹503, leading to an additional burden of ₹600 per year for low-income families.

This price hike will come into effect from April 8.

In addition, the government has raised excise duty on petrol and diesel by ₹2 per litre. However, this will not affect pump prices. With the hike, the total tax on petrol has increased to ₹21.9 per litre and on diesel to ₹17.8 per litre.

This move is expected to generate approximately ₹32,000 crore in additional revenue annually for the government, given India’s annual consumption of around 16,000 crore litres of petrol and diesel.

Petroleum Minister Hardeep Puri stated that the LPG pricing in India is based on Saudi CP (Contract Price), which rose from $385 per ton in July 2023 to $629 per ton in February 2025. As per this benchmark, the actual cost of an LPG cylinder should be around ₹1,028. Due to heavy under-recoveries (₹41,338 crore last fiscal year) faced by public sector oil companies, the price increase was deemed necessary.

He also noted that the current daily cooking cost for Ujjwala consumers is around ₹6.10 and ₹14.58 for regular users, which he considers reasonable. The ₹50 hike is meant to cover both future and past costs.