Daily revision of petrol, diesel rates: Fuel prices to change every morning from today, key takeaways

Daily revision of petrol, diesel rates: Petrol and diesel prices will be changed on a daily basis. Starting today, the move by state-owned oil companies will mark a departure from the earlier practice of fortnightly revisions of rates, according to reports. Rates will change everyday depending on any movement in international oil rates. Yesterday, petrol price was reduced cut by Rs 1.12 per litre and diesel price was cut by Rs 1.24 per litre. Till now, prices were used to be revised on 1st and 16th of every month based on the fortnightly average of international oil price and the foreign exchange rate, the report says.

Here are key takeaways

Rates will change at 6 am everyday depending on movement in cost on the previous day. The prices declared on a daily basis shall be applicable from 6 AM to 6 AM the next day, Indian Oil Corp said.

Rates will vary from city to city as well as from petrol pump to petrol pump with Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) deciding to follow a marginal differential pricing.

Daily revision of retail selling price of petrol and diesel on pilot basis was implemented in Chandigarh, Jamshedpur, Puducherry District, Udaipur and Visakhapatnam from May 1.

It has been learned that Petrol and diesel price will change on a daily basis by a few paisa per litre across all the 58,000 petrol pumps in the country.

“We are moving into a dynamic pricing. Correction in prices now happen after a gap of a fortnight but from now on it will be on daily basis to reflect the cost,” IOC Chairman Sanjiv Singh said.

Analyst said that daily price change will remove the big leaps in rates that need to be effected at the end of the fortnight and consumer will be more aligned to market dynamics, according to report.

While petrol price was freed from government control in June 2010, diesel rates were deregulated in October 2014.

Technically, oil companies have freedom to revise rates but often they have been guided by political considerations. Rates differ by only a few paise between pumps of the three state fuel retailers.

With daily changes, which are unlikely to more than few paise per litre, the political pressures for not revising rates, particularly when they are to be hiked, will go, the reports say.

For the convenience of the consumers, public sector oil marketing companies are taking steps to establish an appropriate mechanism for conveying the prices to consumers every day, including daily publishing of the prices in newspaper on a daily basis, prominent displays of prices at the retail outlets, sending of price-related data/SMS from the centralised locations, mobile apps etc, the report said.