“The meeting, earlier scheduled for December 14, has been postponed due to non-availability of some ministers,” Petroleum Secretary M S Srinivasan said here.

The ministerial group is to look into pricing of some essential commodities, including petrol, diesel, domestic cooking gas and PDS kerosene.

Members

The GoM also includes Defence Minister A K Antony, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister T R Baalu and Consumer Affairs Minister Sharad Pawar.

Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum are projected to lose Rs 69,753 crore on sale of petrol, diesel, LPG and PDS kerosene as the government has not allowed them to raise prices in line with the price of imported crude.

Price loss

Petrol is being sold at a loss of Rs 8.74 a litre, diesel at Rs 9.92 per litre, kerosene Rs 20.53 a litre and LPG at a loss of Rs 256.35 per cylinder.

Marginal hike

Government is understood to be mulling a marginal hike in petrol and diesel price along with an excise duty cut on auto fuels.

This move is to manage the Rs 7,840 crore loss that the public sector oil firms are incurring every month on selling fuel below cost to consumers.