 There's a lot of propaganda going on about petrol prices right now. The first thing that we have been told is that India did not raise prices when the rest of the world was doing and even now India's price rise is much, much lower than the rest of the world. Government ministers are saying in parliament, look, the rest of the world has risen at 50% in just one year. We have increased it just by 5% till March and of course those raises are happening right now. But the second argument given is that if you look at the actual prices on the ground, Indians pay the lowest amount compared to what someone in London is paying, someone in New York is paying, what someone in Paris or Berlin or any such place, even Australia and China compare these places, every person is paying more or more or less the same as what Indians pay for their petrol and diesel. So prices are not high, that is what they ought to be. So on the face of it, the argument seems correct and even if one doesn't take the cutoff that the government has taken, that is April to March and compares April to April and this is what I'm going to do. If you look at it, compared to last April, in the US, petrol prices have gone up by 41% and the cutoff date I'm using here is 4th of April for which I have all this data. In the UK it has gone up by 29% in Germany 25% in France by 31% in Australia just by just 6% in India by 14%. This is after these rises that have taken place except the last one because as I said 4th April is my cutoff point to make it comparable. So if you look at it, it's only Australia where the prices have increased less than what it has been in India, rest everywhere the price increase in the last one year has been higher but then I thought that let me think about it because petrol prices actually crashed right after Covid started. So from February-March petrol prices crashed in 2020, so why don't we compare pre-Covid prices which is January 2020 with what the prices are in April and here is what it looks like because as I said Covid came everything crashed, here's what it looks like when we compare January 2020 to now April 2022 because that's pre-Covid versus the recovery period. USA prices have gone up by 58% UK they have gone up by 27% in Germany by 29% in France by 19% in Australia by 17% and in India by 37% now look at this except for the US where it went up by 58% every other country the increase from pre-Covid to now has been the highest in India and remember that that was the high point after which in India too there was a slight drop in prices so that was the peak it dropped and after that other countries benefited because of the drop in prices Indian consumers never did get anything from that. Now comes the second part which is petrol price comparison let's compare petrol prices across the world because they can be converted to USD and US dollars and then we can convert them back into rupees and find out what it costs in rupees this is the official exchange rate in USA a liter of petrol right now costs 91 rupees which is lower than the average rate in India but in UK it's 161 rupees 161 rupees in Germany 165 rupees in France 146 rupees even in Australia it's 110 rupees in China 111 rupees and in India the average was 112 rupees on the 4th of January so you look at it we are either lower than except for US where petrol is always cheap we are either lower than the rest of the world or we are at par with Australia and China and we can do the same comparison for diesel prices and again now it's even more start because in USA diesel is more expensive 101 rupees UK 176 rupees Germany 170 rupees France 153 rupees in China in Australia 122 rupees in China 100 rupees and India 100 rupees so India is clearly the lowest price among the bigger economies when it comes to diesel but these comparisons are actually all comparisons that are being made in dollar terms but in reality one has to compare as to what is the purchasing power of a currency what is the purchasing power what can they buy with their money that is what is called purchasing power parity and that is not the same as the exchange rate it means that if something costs one dollar in the US how much would it cost elsewhere in another country the same thing in the domestic market in their market how much would it cost this is what is called purchasing power parity and here is what it is what one dollar can buy in the US in the UK about 0.67 euro can buy that same thing in Germany 0.73 euro can buy the same thing in France 0.73 euro same can buy the same thing in Australia 1.46 Australian dollars can buy the same thing is not the exchange rate we are saying what can be purchased in that market the same thing in China it will take you 4.18 yuan a remin B to buy the same thing that dollar buys but remember the exchange rate is much higher almost double in India it just takes 23 rupees for us to buy the same thing that would cost one dollar in the US so that is why the purchasing power parity dollar rate of India is 23 rupees exchange rate is much higher so now let us reduce it to how affordable is petrol in each country if the average income defines what purchasing power that country has and the purchasing power parity of that currency then how expensive is petrol when we reduce it to purchasing power parity terms remember not exchange rate term that I showed you earlier because it doesn't matter what the exchange rate is there what matters is what we can buy how much of our income goes in petrol and diesel and that's where the comparison comes in here is you can see how affordable is petrol purchasing power parity time in USA it is just 28 rupees a liter if you actually break it down to Indian purchasing power in UK by Indian purchasing power equivalent it is just 57 rupees a liter in Germany 64 in France 56 in Australia just 31 rupees in China 52 rupees and in India 112 rupees you can see that we are paying almost double what any of the big economies are paying when it comes to our ability to buy things when we compare it to our average income we are paying double the amount for petrol what about diesel diesel which is very very important for India's economy what do we do when we pay for diesel here USA purchasing power 31 rupees for a liter in UK is the same purchasing power parity as Indian rupees 62 rupees Germany 66 rupees France 59 rupees Australia just 34 rupees China just 47 rupees and in India it's 100 rupees so you can clearly see that in terms of affordability compared to income because that is what ultimately matters and in terms of the purchasing power of our people we are paying almost double for fuel that any other big economy is paying and when it comes to increase in prices you saw that when we compared to pre-covid versus now and our prices are increasing whereas just to the world the prices started falling India is amongst the highest when it comes to increase in prices that comparison between April 2021 when the prices had gone down with March 2022 when prices were at their peak is a false comparison it's a misleading comparison the real comparison is peak before COVID the drop which we didn't gain anything from and the recovery what is the price at that level that's the show today keep watching news click like this video share it and also share it on Twitter social media so that more people can see it