NEW DELHI: If there\u2019s one part of India\u2019s economy that\u2019s been relatively unscathed by the devastating impact of Covid-19 it\u2019s the vast rural hinterlands. And the country\u2019s biggest fuel retailers are sitting up and taking notice.
\nStay-at-home orders first imposed from March last year had a disproportionate impact on India\u2019s teeming cities, but in small towns and villages people mostly went about their business with fewer restrictions. A bumper agricultural crop and a splurge in government spending to pull the economy out of a slump is also expected to put more money into the hands of rural farmers and laborers.
\nThe increasing economic importance of India\u2019s hinterlands is influencing business expansion plans and accelerating a trend of more service stations being opened in the countryside. Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp — two of the three biggest fuel retailers — both said they planned to raise the proportion of outlets they have in rural areas this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI: If there\u2019s one part of India\u2019s economy that\u2019s been relatively unscathed by the devastating impact of Covid-19 it\u2019s the vast rural hinterlands. And the country\u2019s biggest fuel retailers are sitting up and taking notice. Stay-at-home orders first imposed from March last year had a disproportionate impact on India\u2019s teeming cities, but in small towns and villages people mostly went about their business with fewer restrictions. A bumper agricultural crop and a splurge in government spending to pull the economy out of a slump is also expected to put more money into the hands of rural farmers and laborers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,219,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-402679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-oil-gas-the-times-of-india","category-the-times-of-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}