Daily revision of fuel to start tomorrow as dealers call off strike

Daily revision will stay and start from June 16, says govt

Fuel dealer associations on Wednesday called off their plan to go for “no purchase” of fuel from June 16 in protest against the proposed daily revision of prices by oil marketing companies, after intervention from Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. 

Sources said the government had assured of an increase in dealer commission from July. This is likely to increase petrol and diesel prices further.

Before rolling out daily revision nationally, public sector oil companies had conducted a 40-day pilot run in five cities — Chandigarh, Jamshedpur, Puducherry, Udaipur, and Visakhapatnam. 

“This is a pro-consumer move and one of the biggest reforms in the sector. Due to difficulties that dealers were facing, we have decided to start daily pricing from 6 am, instead of 11 pm as decided earlier,” Pradhan said.

State-run companies claim that dealers will be trained extensively to ensure that customers do not face any pricing misinformation or glitches.  One of the dealers told Business Standard that for the past two days they had started receiving demo messages on their phones from the companies giving information on prices. 

“We are withdrawing our [strike] call. We have been assured there will be a higher dealer commission from July. However, the rate of increase will be decided later. We have asked for a 5 per cent increase on both petrol and diesel,” said Ashok Badhwar, president, Federation of All India Petroleum Traders. 

A meeting on this would be held with oil marketing companies on June 30.

Of the 59,595 fuel retail outlets in the country, about 54,000 outlets are under by state-run companies, such as Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation. 

In the meeting held on Wednesday, a major concern that dealers highlighted was regarding the automation of petrol pumps.  According to them, only 10,000 outlets in the country are automated now. 

“I have asked the companies to address these issues and increase the pace of automation as soon as possible,” Pradhan added.