Alternate day fuel price revision rolls on, pause after hike a day ago

Under the new found preference for revising fuel prices every alternate day, the Oil marketing companies (OMCs) kept the pump price of petrol and diesel unchanged on Wednesday.

Accordingly, the price of petrol continues to remain at Tuesday level of Rs 92.85 a litre and diesel Rs 83.51 per litre in Delhi.

Across the country as well the petrol and diesel prices remained static on Wednesday but its actual retail prices varied depending on the level of local levies in respective states.

The OMCs are following the practice of changing petrol and fuel rates every alternate day rather than undertaking changes on a daily basis for past few days. Accordingly, the Wednesday's price hold came after there was an increase in prices on Tuesday. There was no price increase on Monday as well.

Also, on Sunday while petrol and diesel prices were raised by 24 and 27 paise per litre respectively, there was no price revision on Saturday. Similarly, while fuel prices were raised on Friday, it remained unchanged in the previous day.

"It seems oil companies are giving a sense of relief to consumers as fuel prices are not being raised on a daily basis. But still prices are not actually falling but being raised on every alternate day too this month," said a oil sector expert not willing to be named.

He said that the practice of daily price revision, started after deregulation of petrol and diesel prices few years back. This has now been done away by OMCs for past several months giving clear indication that administrative price regime is still working for the sector.