National Secretary and spokesperson of Fedration of All India Petroleum Traders (FAIPT) Sukhminderpal Singh Grewal said our national president Ashok Badhwar wrote a letter to Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan informing him about the no purchase no sale on June 16, 2017 by the petrol pumps of the country in protest against the decision of oil marketing companies to change the retail price of petroleum products on daily basis.
Grewal said Badhwar wrote that certain reports in a section of the media suggest that oil marketing companies are planning to start daily revision of price of petroleum products and if the news is correct then it shall kill the petrol dealers involved in retailing of petroleum products in the entire country in one go.
He said the oil industry had launched a pilot project in this behalf. “Dealers of five cities where it was launched have already burnt their fingers. They are crying at the inventory loss that they have already suffered due the fluctuations in the daily changing prices on the inventory held by them. Minimum that was expected of oil marketing companies was, in all fairness, to have made an objective study on the operations and profitability of retail outlets and then made any informed decision.
“Sadly nothing of that kind has been done and now this misadventure is going to be implemented in the entire country. Petrol dealers see a dark road ahead of them if such a misinformed decision is put in practice,” he said.
FAIPT president wrote to the Minister that he very much is aware that 50 per cent f the entire dealership network sells on average 30 kls per month. “One tank lorry of 18 kls lasts most of such small dealers 7 to 10 days. Any such a decision shall wipe out his entire working capital if the prices were to go down frequently.”
He said again there are dealerships where a tank lorry takes two to three days to reach the retail outlet. In such cases there is a strong possibility that by the time the tank lorry reaches the retail outlet its price might have already reduced leaving the dealer only to cry as he shall be in no position to withstand the loss on its capital erosion due to negative price revision.
He said that FAIPT had earlier also written to you that the fortnightly revision of retail price of petroleum products was a decision taken by your learned predecessor Hon’ble Shri Ram Naik after serious deliberations with all partners including Federation of All India Petroleum Traders. If at all any modification in the current system of fortnightly revision of prices is needed then it could at best be changed to weekly revision but revising it daily would ruin the petrol retailers as it would change the character of fuel retailing to that of speculative retailing.
According FAIPT daily revision in prices shall mean that the dealer shall have to be personally present at the retail outlet every night to implement the revised prices of petrol and diesel. It is the ground reality that the new prices , even in a situation when they are changed fortnightly, are communicated by the oil industry much later than 12’o clock in the night. The dealer has to ensure the implementation of new prices in the dispensing units. The net result is that the dealer is forced to stay awake till much later in the night to effect price change. Such effort once in a fortnight is accepted by the dealer as a professional hazard but doing it daily would be beyond the physical competence of all dealers.
He told that further the entire network of PSU oil companies is far from fully automated. So there is no possibility of changing the price in the dispensing units through remote operations. Further the motoring public which has now accepted the fortnightly revision may not find it buyer friendly measure of a new price every single day.
FAIPT President said that they have never believed in giving any kind of strike call but such a measure of daily price revision shall ruin the very existence of Dealers. In a situation such as this, the federation of all India petroleum traders humbly pleads that system of daily revision of petrol prices should be dropped. Dealers of the entire country have unanimously decided that should the decision of daily revision of petrol prices not be shelved, then the dealers shall observe “NO no favorable response to drop this draconian decision then they shall go on an indefinite.