NEW DELHI: India’s fuel consumption in October posted its first year-on-year increase since February, as slowing coronavirus cases and increased mobility accelerated an economic recovery, data showed on Thursday.
Consumption of refined fuels, a proxy for oil demand, rose 2.5% in October from the prior year to 17.78 million tonnes and nearly 15% higher from the previous month, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the ministry of petroleum & natural gas showed.
“GST (Goods and Services Tax) collections, power demand, PMI etc all are indicating increased economic activity and COVID cases are also coming down to a point where demand is coming back to normalcy,” said K Ravichandran, senior vice president at Icra, a unit of Moody’s Investors Service.
