Amid lockdown crisis, fuel consumers could further face the heat from rising fuel prices with public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) mulling to restart daily price revision of the retail price of fuel.
As per reports, the daily price revision of auto fuels may start again once the lockdown is lifted or more relaxations are announced by the government later in the month.
However, no final decision has been taken on it now.
If this happens, petrol and diesel prices can start rising again every day as global oil market has also studied gaining more than 50 per cent over last month’s prices to around $ 30 a barrel now.
Petrol and diesel prices have not been revised since March 16 (it went up in Delhi on May 5 only after state government raised VAT) and that gave cushion to the government to steeply raise excise duty on the two products without impacting their retail prices, reports say.
“But that cushion is no longer there now and once daily price revision plan starts, auto fuel could see steep rise over the course of few days,” said an OMC officail.
However, government sources indicated that the retail price of petrol and diesel may not be allowed to increase beyond a point even if the daily price revision restarts.
This would mean that the petroleum products could increase marginally every day by 30-50 paisa or even lower till the oil companies are able to eliminate the gap between cost and sales.
Petrol is retailing at Rs 71.26 a litre while diesel at Rs 69.39 a litre in Delhi.