Brake on petrol, diesel price rise after three consecutive days of hikes

Petrol and diesel prices remained unchanged on Monday after witnessing hike over more than a week. Oil companies kept check on the rise in price, much to the relief of consumers, after 9 days of hikes in the last 10 days.

Price of petrol and diesel remained at Sunday's level at ₹82.34 per litre for diesel in the national capital, and at ₹72.42 a litre for diesel. On Sunday, petrol price was hiked by 24 paise per litre and diesel by 27 paise as hopes of a vaccine development led to a rally in international oil prices.

However, the relief is small and may be short-lived in future. After almost a two-month hiatus, oil companies started to revise price of petrol and diesel from November 20. Since then, petrol prices went up by ₹1.28 per litre and diesel by ₹1.96 a litre in the last 10 days. There was a gap of one day last week when the prices remain unchanged.

Before November 20, petrol prices were not hiked since September 22 while the price of diesel also remained unchanged since October 2.

The 58-day hiatus in petrol price revision and 48-day status quo on diesel rates were preceded by no change in rates between June 30 and August 15 and a 85-day status quo between March 17 and June 6.

The Indian oil marketing companies - Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd - usually revise rates of petrol and diesel on a daily basis, based on international oil price and foreign exchange rates. However, since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, the companies had decided to calibrate the rates to avoid volatility in retail prices.

But with crude on the boil again on news of a successful coronavirus vaccine launch soon, the patience was lost by OMCs who finally resorted to price increase to cover for their under recovery on the sale of two petroleum products.