Fuel prices to be revised daily

Oil retailers in the country are planning to introduce daily price revisions for petrol and diesel prices depending on international oil prices. 

Starting from May 1, 2017, you may see petrol and diesel prices change every day in accordance with international oil prices. Major state-owned fuel operators such as Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) will reportedly start a pilot run in five cities from the said date to check the feasibility of daily fuel price revision at their respective petrol pumps. Since the aforementioned fuel retailers own over 95 per cent of around 58,000 petrol pumps in the country, there’s a good chance that daily revision in fuel prices will become a nationwide concept soon.

The pilot run for daily revision of petrol and diesel prices will be first executed in five major cities, namely - Puducherry, Vizag, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh. After studying the findings, it will gradually be applied to other parts of the country.

Revising fuel prices based on a daily basis is something that most of the developed nations do. The advantages of revising fuel prices daily will be more accurate than the current format of fortnightly price revisions since it’ll eliminate big price hikes/cuts in fuel prices. At present, oil companies average out the fluctuations in international fuel prices between 1^st and 15^th of a month, and only then the revised rates are applied. Like, for instance, the recent price revision saw oil companies reduce the price of petrol by Rs 3.77/litre and diesel by Rs 2.91/litre. Once the fuel prices are revised on a daily basis, the difference in price changes won’t be more than a few paise per litre.