Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: There is no major impact on India due to the rise in global crude oil prices, as the country’s inflation is near the lower bound”, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Parliament on March 9. The price of crude oil that India imports has been on a declining trajectory for the past one year, till the geopolitical clashes commenced in West Asia on February 28, 2026, Sitharaman said in an answer to a question in the Lok Sabha.
“Between the end of February and until March 2, 2026, the crude oil price (Indian basket) rose from $69.01 per barrel to $80.16 a barrel. Given that India’s inflation is near the lower bound, the impact on inflation is not estimated to be substantial at this point,” Sitharaman said.
Global crude prices have been rising since February 28, when the US and Israel launched military strikes on Iran. The war has now spread to the Middle East region as Iran hit back with retaliatory drone and missile strikes on US bases in the region.
Replying to the question, Sitharaman said that the RBI’s Monetary Policy Report in October 2025 had estimated that if crude oil prices are higher by 10 per cent than the baseline assumptions, and assuming full pass-through to domestic prices, inflation could turn out to be higher by 30 basis points.
She further stated that the medium-term impact of the global crude oil price rise on inflation depends on several factors, including exchange rate movements, global demand and supply situation, monetary policy transmission, the state of general inflation, and the extent of the indirect pass-through.
The average retail inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index declined from 5.4 per cent in 2023-24 to 4.6 per cent in 2024-25 and further to 1.8 per cent in 2025-26 (April-January).
