State oil companies will revise petrol and diesel prices for consumers every day from June 16. The daily changes, however, are unlikely to be more than a few paise per litre, reported Economic Times.
Fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd had launched a pilot for daily price revision in five cities – in Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh – from May 1. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, during a meeting on Wednesday, directed top executives to extend the new pricing mechanism to the entire country.
Currently, rates are revised by state fuel retailers on the 1st and 16th of every month. The average international price of fuel in the preceding 15 days and the currency exchange rate is taken into consideration while deciding them. However, pump rates will now be based on daily changes in international oil prices and rupee-dollar fluctuations. The state and central levies will be charged in addition to this price.
The retailers own more than 95% of nearly the 58,000 petrol pumps in the country, reported Hindustan Times. While, oil companies do have the freedom to revise rates on their own, they are often guided by political pressures. With the introduction of daily changes, this pressure will not be present anymore.
Petrol prices were freed from government control in June 2010 and diesel was deregulated in October 2014.
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