Get ready for daily revision of petrol and diesel prices across the country from mid-June.
“The final modalities of the project are still being worked out, but a nationwide daily fuel price revision will be implemented in the second fortnight of this month,” an oil marketing company official told BusinessLine .
The decision to extend the pilot project to a nationwide rollout was taken after a review meeting by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. The meeting was taking stock of the pilot project for daily fuel price revision exercise in five cities by public sector oil marketing companies.
The pilot was initiated in Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh from May 1. Under the daily revision exercise, the moving average of product price for the preceding 15 days with a lag of two days is taken into consideration for deciding the retail price.
Ajay Bansal, President of the All India Petroleum Dealers Association, had told BusinessLine that a nationwide rollout will not be an easy task to implement.
“It will not be possible to implement this pricing methodology manually,” he pointed out. “There are 40,000 automated petrol and diesel retail outlets out of the approximately 56,000 total fuel outlets (in the country).”
The outlets that are not automated will follow the fortnightly revision till these are brought under the automation regime.
Of the 40,000 automated outlets, network connectivity issues will be a hindrance in implementing the revisions, Bansal added. Usually, dealers approach oil marketing companies every other day to meet their requirements. With the daily price revision, the windfall gain or loss to retailers will be wiped out, according to him.