Petrol dealers facing challenges: CIPD

The Consortium of Indian Petroleum Dealers' Association, representing three-fourth of dealers network in the country, says the members are facing various issues including margins that have got reduced due to 'evaporation losses'.
"The dealers are facing numerous problems that are threatening our survival," Ravi Shinde, President of Petrol Dealers Association, Mumbai, and a key member of the Association, said here.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Association's Annual General Meeting here, he said the dealer margins, which were about 8 per cent few years back have been reduced to just over 2 per cent of the cost of petrol and diesel.

He sought the help of oil marketing companies and the government in this regard.
"With every increase in price of petrol and diesel, this meagre margin gets further eroded, due to the fact that the product now evaporates at the new escalated cost and the dealer has to put in additional finances to buy the same product.
"The evaporation loss or the loss of the stored fuel by evaporation is the single biggest factor that erodes our margin at almost 1 per cent in petrol and 0.4 per cent in diesel. Pilferages by the transport mafia further aggravates our problems," he said.

Punjab Petroleum Dealers Association President, J P Khanna said petrol dealers are demanding the margins be at least 3 per cent of the cost of invoice per litre.
"The margins need to be revised every six months to offset cost input escalation like salaries and wages, electricity and increase in product price. Realistic component of evaporation should be incorporated while calculating dealer margin," he said.
Stating that this retail trade is a volume game where low selling dealers have to fight it out to survive in the current scheme of things, the association's president Kiranbhai Patel said they have demanded a special survival package for these dealers.