NEW DELHI: Consumers have been spared of another hike in auto fuel prices with oil marketing companies (OMCs) deciding to keep petrol and diesel rates unchanged on Thursday.

This is the second consecutive day of fuel price unchanged and follows slight softening in global oil market over demand concerns prime markets in Asia seeing rising cases of coronavirus. With fuel prices spared of another increase, effectively the price of petrol continues to remain at Wednesday's 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 price remained static on Thursday but its actual retail prices varied depending on the level of local levies in respective states.

Before Thursday, oil marketing companies were revising fuel prices on every alternate day for last one week rather than undertaking changes on a daily basis as has been practise. Accordingly, the Wednesday's price hold came after there was an increase in prices on Tuesday. These was no price increase on Monday as well.

Under daily price revision, OMCs revise petrol and diesel prices every morning benchmarking retail fuel prices to a 15-day rolling average of global refined products' prices and dollar exchange rate. However, in a market where fuel prices need to be increased successively, alternate day price revision seems to be the flavour.

Notably, in May the retail price of regular petrol has already reached over Rs 99 a litre in Mumbai. Petrol prices are already over Rs 100 per litre in several cities in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Premium petrol has been hovering above that level for some time now.

Today, Andhra Pradesh Assembly has scheduled budget session

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