KARACHI, Sept 28: The Oil Companies Advisory Committee (OCAC) is meeting on Monday for fortnightly price adjustment of oil products amid looming confusion in the market whether the OCAC will really announce the prices or come out with a simple statement of “no price adjustment today.”

“We have called the committee meeting,” an official in the OCAC told Dawn but declined to confirm whether the prices would be announced.

Almost the same situation, as prevailing in previous fortnight price fixation, looms large as the oil prices have again gone up by one dollar a barrel in the current fortnight as compared to last 15 days owing to mounting US-Iraq tension. However, the rupee has gained its strength against the US dollar by 10-12 paisa but analysts said that it would hardly make any impact to offset the global price hike. As a result, OCAC may again be bound to increase the domestic oil prices.

Oil sector sources said that the OCAC members would assemble as usual but the Ministry of Petroleum may ask the committee to delay the price announcement following elections on October 10.

OCAC had already taken at least four days to announce the price on September 19 instead of September 15 owing to Petroleum Ministry’s pressure to delay the price revision as the local prices were set to rise by two to six per cent as a result of rising oil prices in international markets. On September 19, the committee had finally come out with the price hike of all oil products by 20 to 34 paisa per litre.

To mitigate the impact on consumer prices, the government had decided to reduce the petroleum development levy (PDL) on various products, thus taking a hit on the revenue collection to keep the price hike minimum and protect the consumers.

But market analysts say that it will be hard for the government to again lower the PDL to nullify the higher impact of global oil price hike for the sake of general consumers. The option is now left with the government to skip the September 30 price revision for the political consideration.

They said that again the government had to make some calculations,. which it did in the last price revision by cutting the PDL.

In the last one year, petrol has become costlier by 9.54 per cent as it was selling at Rs 31.64 per litre on September 2001 as compared to prevailing rate of Rs 34.66 per litre. Similarly, diesel price has gone up by 11.19 per cent in the same period as it now priced at Rs 19.75 per litre as against Rs 17.77 per litre.