The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation raised the price of diesel and 92 Octane petrol with effect from midnight on Wednesday, two days after the Energy Minister said the government was trying to hold diesel steady and one day after the Cabinet approved a Rs. 40.65 billion diesel relief package.
The revision was announced late on Wednesday evening and reported by the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst and Hiru News, whose figures agree in full.
The new prices
| Product | Previous price | New price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auto Diesel | Rs. 382 | Rs. 392 / litre | up Rs. 10 |
| Super Diesel (Euro 4) | Rs. 478 | Rs. 528 / litre | up Rs. 50 |
| Petrol 92 Octane | Rs. 399 | Rs. 414 / litre | up Rs. 15 |
| Petrol 95 Octane (Euro 4) | Rs. 475 | Rs. 475 / litre | unchanged |
| Kerosene | Rs. 285 | Rs. 285 / litre | unchanged |
The previous prices are from Hiru’s filing, which is the only one of the three to publish them.
In percentage terms the increases are uneven. Auto Diesel rises about 2.6%, Petrol 92 about 3.8%, and Super Diesel about 10.5% — the steepest move of the three. The two products left alone are the premium 95 Octane grade and kerosene, which is used for cooking and lighting in lower-income and fishing households.
What the government had said
Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka said on Saturday that the government was trying to keep diesel prices steady at this revision, adding that the alternative was to pay a subsidy. “We are trying to keep at least the diesel prices steady,” he said, putting global crude around US$110 a barrel.
On Monday the Cabinet approved a three-month relief programme worth up to Rs. 40.65 billion, covering Auto Diesel and Industrial Diesel from October and excluding petrol. The allocation tapers from Rs. 15 billion in October to Rs. 12.15 billion in December.
Diesel rose anyway — but by the smallest margin of the three products that moved, and by far less than Super Diesel, which the relief package does not cover. Neither outlet reports whether the subsidy was applied to this revision, and neither gives a per-litre subsidy rate, so the relationship between the two decisions is not established in the reporting.
The cost pressure behind it
Sri Lanka has committed to market-reflective fuel pricing under its International Monetary Fund programme. Lanka IOC’s managing director K. Raghu told the Daily Mirror last weekend that while crude was around US$105 a barrel, refined diesel was trading near US$170 a barrel on the Singapore benchmark and that LIOC was losing roughly Rs. 140 a litre on diesel. It is the refined product price, not crude, that sets an importer’s cost.
Pump prices have moved sharply through 2026. They were raised by more than 50% after the Middle Eastern escalation that began on 28 February, and had been reduced twice before this increase.
The rise lands on the same day the Central Bank held its policy rate at 8.75% and the Department of Census and Statistics reported September inflation at 8%. Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe said on Wednesday that the fuel subsidy and a vehicle import surcharge had helped curb inflation — remarks made before the revision was announced.
Lanka IOC follows
Hiru reports that Lanka IOC raised its own pump prices in step with the CPC revision, answering one of the questions the first reports left open. Lanka IOC prices its fuel off a means-of-platts Singapore formula and had been signalling losses on diesel before this revision.
Not reported
No outlet gives a reason for the increase, the size of any subsidy applied, the date of the next revision, or whether the other private distributors — RM Parks and Sinopec — will follow. The government has separately been weighing whether to let private fuel firms set their own prices within a band.
