Mumbai,  Sparking concerns in the New Year, the Mahanagar Gas Ltd (MGL) will hike the prices of CNG and PNG with effect from midnight tonight, again in barely three weeks, an official said here on Saturday.

The basic price of CNG is increased by Rs 2.50/kg and domestic PNG by Rs 1.50/SCM for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), coming after a steep hike effected on Dec. 17/18, last year.

Accordingly, the revised all-inclusive prices of CNG that fuels vehicles will go up from Rs 63.50/kg to Rs 66.00/kg, and the home use PNG shall shoot up from Rs 38/SCM to Rs 39.50/SCM, said an MGL spokesperson.

Justifying the fresh hike, the MGL said in order to meet the shortfall in domestic gas allocation, it is sourcing additional market priced natural gas to cater to the increasing requirement of CNG and Domestic PNG segments.

On account of substantial increase in market priced natural gas price, MGL's input gas cost has also increased substantially, and the fresh hike for consumers is expected to partly offset its costs.

The latest revision comes after December 17/18 - when the MGL increased the rates of CNG by Rs 2.00/kg and PNG by Rs 1.50/SCM - hitting hard the 1.60 million PNG consumers and over 800,000 CNG customers using gas-powered vehicles.

Incidentally, the MGL had increased the CNG-PNG prices twice in October ahead of the festival season, followed by November and again in December.

However, the MGL has assured that despite the fresh hikes, the CNG offers attractive savings of around 59 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively, compared with petrol and diesel at current prices, and PNG saves around 22 per cent in comparison with the prices of domestic LPG cylinders.