This graph shows the price of Lanka Petrol 95 Octane compared to the global price of a barrel of crude. The price of crude is in dollars and the price of petrol is in rupees, but I was just looking at how connected the two lines are. As you can see, it’s a bit of a political lever, but the price of fuel is basically connected to the price of global oil. Sri Lanka is in a bad position because of the United States’ dumb embargo on Iran which they have to get everyone else involved in, but beyond that we basically following the global market.
| Date | Petrol 92 | Petrol 95 | Auto Diesel | Super Diesel | Kerosene |
| Jan 22, 2015 | Rs. 117 | Rs. 128 | Rs. 95 | Rs. 110 | Rs. 65 |
| Dec 5, 2014 | Rs. 150 | Rs. 158 | Rs. 111 | Rs. 133 | Rs. 81 |
| Sept 17, 2014 | Rs. 157 | Rs. 165 | Rs. 118 | Rs. 140 | Rs. 86 |
While Mahinda has politically reduced fuel prices before the Uva election and the Presidential election (September and December 2014), he could only really ride the global price wave. In the same way, this reduction, while politically timed, is also just reflected a global drop (plummet really) in crude oil prices.
In many ways this price drop has more to do with shale oil production in the US and whatever the Saudis are thinking than with local Sri Lankan politics.
In other news, I think a better policy overall is if the government drops taxes on electric cars to zero and reduces them on hybrid cars. Given Sri Lanka’s size we could easily cover the island with fast recharging stations and the tax burden on cars is already so high (over 100% sometimes) that these incentives could see us converting to a mostly electric/hybrid fleet in a decade. But that’s another story, as is building a modern electrical grid to match.
Good comparison and +1 on the electric/hybrid tax suggestion. That’s the way to go really…
Nice comparison really brings a new perspective to the discussion
But the Sri Lankan fuel prices don’t seem to “ride the global price wave” from 2011-04 on. The crude prices drop while the local fuel prices keep increasing. That is until close to the presidential election.
Any reason why we can’t ride the global prices much closer than that?
I don’t think given graph depicts the reality, just by looking at the two lines and their slopes doesn’t give true weight of the difference. Especially one in dollar and other in rupees. It is very easy to show that both move in parallel in a graph like this. I think it would be better to consider both in one currency and also give some stats about percentage rise or decline between peaks of both lines. For ex: 2008 June to December fall, it is no where in parallel. That is the problem of this kind of unscaled graph
Um, dollars to rupees? While that’s good for a snapshot trend- far from an ideal for our imp/exp economy.
What about the effect of exchange rate?
USD was 107.45 LKR on 1/1/2007 and 131.79 LKR on 1/22/2015
and how do we generate the required electricity for this mythical grid?
what do we burn for that or do we hope to have an equally formidable bevy of enviro power solutions like solar, wind, hydro etc etc (none of which are scalable in SL)
we basically following the global market
Search for additional useful info and tips for tradinf on majesticoptions.com