Taking advantage of the latest round of price cuts on diesel and petrol, the Finance Ministry on Wednesday raised the excise duty on fuel for a sixth time.

Excise duty on diesel has been hiked by ₹1.17 a litre and on petrol by 30 paise a litre. This, however, will not impact the price at the retail end. The public sector oil companies on Tuesday had reduced petrol and diesel prices by 50 paise and 46 paise for every litre respectively.

Basic excise duty on unbranded petrol has been increased from ₹7.06 a litre to ₹7.36 and on unbranded diesel from ₹4.66 to ₹5.83 a litre. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the fresh hikes would fetch ₹2,500 crore as revenue in the current fiscal.

The government had on November 7 raised excise duty on petrol by ₹1.60 a litre and on diesel by 30 paise a litre. Piggybacking on the low global crude oil prices, the government has been increasing excise duty on diesel and petrol to finance its spending bill. Excise duty collections from diesel and fuel helped mop up nearly ₹40,000 crore till October-end. While higher excise duty on petrol fetched ₹9,903 crore during April-October 2015-16, it helped raise ₹30,240 crore from diesel in the period.

Buoyed by the additional revenue measures indirect tax collections shot up by 34.3 per cent to ₹4.38 lakh crore between April and November this year.

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