As the Indian market experiences the festive season, the demand for several goods and services has gone up. However, the preliminary industry data on fuel demand has received special eyeballs. According to a PTI report, India’s fuel sales have gone up in the first half of October on the back of economic activity picking up due to the festive season.
According to the PTI report, petrol and diesel sales have jumped 22-26 per cent year-on-year (YoY) while also rising month-on-month in the first half of October, 2022. Coming to the figures, petrol sales have gone up 22.7 per cent to 1.28 million tonne during October 1 to 15, 2022, especially when compared with 1.05 million tonne of consumption in the same period but in 2021.
The fuel sales have now been 31 per cent higher than in first half of October 2020 and 33.4 per cent more than pre-pandemic October 1 to 15, 2019, PTI reports. In addition to the sales, even the demand was 1.3 per cent higher than the first half of September, 2022.
After sales and demand, as far as consumption goes, it was up 16 per cent over October 1 to 15, 2020 and 26.6 per cent higher than the pre-COVID 2019 levels. While this fuel saw a close top 5 per cent drop in sales in August, it now saw a demand rise 6.9 per cent month-on-month, as per PTI.
Leaving aside the numbers, several industry experts have attributed the reasons for this to the ending of monsoon season and a progress in agriculture season as well. Due to rains, the mobility and demand – both tend to get hampered and hence, the diesel demand tends to come down. Hence, as per PTI, the auto fuel sales had also gone down in July and August due to the rains and less demand.
Since the aviation sector has also opened up, the country’s overall passenger traffic at airports have also gone up and slowly tracing back to pre-pandemic levels, PTI reports. It also adds that jet fuel (ATF) demand jumped 22.1 per cent during the first half of October when compared with the same period last year. However, international traffic is reportedly lagging due to restrictions in some countries.
