NEW DELHI: A sustained $10 per barrel increase in crude prices reduces growth in developing countries by 1.5 percent, India's oil minister, S. Jaipal Reddy, said on Wednesday in Vienna, where crude producers of OPEC are meeting this week.
"There could not be a more direct cause and effect relation than high oil prices retarding economic growth of oil-importing countries," Reddy said in a speech, a copy of which was issued to reporters by his ministry in New Delhi.
On Tuesday, India reported its industrial output growth flatlined in April, piling pressure on policy makers to cut rates for the BRIC nation that Standard & Poor's warned could be downgraded to junk status because of political inaction.
India is the world's fourth-largest oil importer and its biggest suppliers are all OPEC nations -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.
Indian refiners' cuts in purchases from Iran have fallen enough to win it a waiver from US sanctions targeting Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
The country's oil import bill rose to $140 billion in 2011-12 from $100 billion in the previous fiscal year as its average cost of imported crude rose $27 per barrel, Reddy said.
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