Petrol price in Pakistan vs India vs Bangladesh: price and affordability

Petrol costs about PKR 393.50 a litre in Pakistan ($1.42) and ₹108.09 in India ($1.13), so in dollar terms Pakistan is 26% more expensive. The gap widens once income is counted: a litre takes about 2.0 hrs of average income in Pakistan against 51 min in India, 2.3 times as long. Across the region, India is cheapest at $1.13 a litre and Sri Lanka dearest at $1.44, based on GlobalPetrolPrices data retrieved 2026-10-13.

Pump prices side by side

Local prices are converted from the dollar price at the 2026-10-13 exchange rate, so they can differ by a rupee or two from the figure on a forecourt sign. The change column compares our latest snapshot with the first one in our history (2026-07-03), in US dollars.

“Work per litre” is the time an average earner needs to pay for one litre, using World Bank GNI per capita and a 2,080-hour working year. Our income dataset does not yet cover Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, so we leave those cells blank rather than guess.

Why comparing rupee to rupee misleads

India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal all call their currency the rupee, but the units are worth very different amounts. Today one Pakistani rupee is worth about ₹0.35, so Pakistan’s price of PKR 393.50 is roughly ₹136.28 in Indian money. A price of 300 rupees in one country and 100 rupees in another says almost nothing until both are put into a common currency. Dollars are the usual yardstick, and on that basis the 5 countries here sit within a fairly narrow band: Sri Lanka costs 28% more than India. Compare that with the gap between the world’s cheapest and most expensive countries in why gas prices differ between countries.

The real gap is in working time

Where the region really splits is income. Dollar prices are only part of the story, average earnings vary a great deal, and fuel is an everyday cost for millions of motorcycle and rickshaw users. For a commuter using 30 litres a month, the fuel bill takes 34% of average monthly income in Pakistan and 15% in India. The pump price in Pakistan is 26% higher than India's in dollars, but it weighs about 2.3 times as heavily on an average Pakistani budget as the Indian price does on an Indian one. Average income per person in Pakistan ($1,500) is well below India's ($2,760).

Averages hide a lot, of course. GNI per capita is a national mean, not what a typical worker takes home, and the burden is larger for lower-paid households in both countries. But as a way to compare like with like across borders, it shows why fuel price changes are front-page politics across South Asia.

How each country sets its price

• Pakistan: the government reviews pump prices on a fortnightly cycle and collects a petroleum levy on every litre, so prices change in visible steps.
• India: oil marketing companies set prices, and the total includes central excise duty plus state VAT, which is why petrol costs different amounts in different states.
• Nepal: imports essentially all its fuel from India through the state-owned Nepal Oil Corporation, which adjusts prices as its import costs change.
• Bangladesh and Sri Lanka: imports run through state-owned corporations (Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation and Ceylon Petroleum Corporation), with prices set by the government and its agencies.

Since our first snapshot, prices moved +31.5% in Pakistan, −1.5% in India, +14.2% in Bangladesh, −3.8% in Sri Lanka and −8.8% in Nepal in local-currency terms (each snapshot converted at its own date’s exchange rate: 2026-07-03 and 2026-10-13), which strips out most of the currency effect in the dollar column above. For the global picture over the same period, see what changed in gas prices in 2026. Indian readers can also compare every country in rupees in petrol prices in all countries in rupees, and see fuel alongside other everyday prices on the India and Pakistan country pages.