Demand dip amid Covid-19, low crude prices may cut India's oil bill by 40%

For India, lower oil prices act as big incentive as the country depends on imports to meet 86% of its requirements

At least in the oil sector, the global health emergency caused by coronavirus is coming to India's advantage. While the severe demand squeeze due to the pandemic helped India save on oil imports, low global crude prices could help it further in reducing sharply the import bill.

Declining consistently since April, India's oil imports fell about 29 per cent (YoY) to around 13.44 million tonnes in June, the lowest since October 2011.

In value terms, the June oil imports stood at $4.93 billion (Rs 37,341.70 crore), down 55.29 per cent in the dollar terms from $11.03 billion (Rs 76,586.73 crore) in June