IOC sees no under-recovery on petrol, diesel in FY17

Talking about demonetisation, he said there have been optimistic signs. About 80 percent of business transacted using cash earlier, he said. “We have doubled our cashless transactions and everyday it is rapidly growing.” Overall, he believes, it would be beneficial for our industry.

Regarding the huge advance tax payout of over Rs 1800 crore that IOC made, he said it is a normal process.Below is the verbatim transcript of B Ashok's interview to Ekta Batra and Nigel D'Souza on CNBC-TV18.Ekta: With regards to the deferment on the petrol and diesel price hikes, which have been undertaken, can you tell us what you mean by deferment, will it be a week, two-three days, can you describe it for us?A: We have not announced any deferment. I have been maintaining that we have been keeping track of the prices on a daily basis and as and when there is a need for us to review the pricing, we will certainly do it.Nigel: You normally review this fortnightly. Now it is the last day of parliament as well. Will this review now take place only in the next 15 days or so or is there a chance that we could see it somewhere in the middle?A: These are things which are handled by the company and we are looking at the prices on a daily basis and whenever we need to take the call, we will certainly take that.We have been monitoring the oil prices and they have been widely fluctuating right from the beginning of November and when the serious talks of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cuts started initially there was a lot of scepticism, oil prices went down to below USD 42 per barrel and a couple of days ago, we were touching USD 55 per barrel, so there has been a lot of volatility in the whole market place and certainly in terms of a prices, we again monitor international prices of petrol and diesel and we have been keeping track of that and as and when there is a need for us to take a decision, we will certainly do that.Ekta: The reason for some type of confusion on the street was that it has not happened when it was anticipated to happen especially at a time where we have seen brent crude prices rise. So in that context, can you tell us that maybe it will possibly happen in terms of any sort of revision of prices in the next 10 days maybe in a week, any anticipated timeline you can provide for us?A: At this point of time, I cannot give you any timeline but I can only say that we are keeping track. It is not necessary that it has to happen exactly on the same date every time. So the prices today are fluctuating and we are keeping track. We will look at it on an overall perspective and then when we will feel there is a need, we will do it.For full interview, watch accompanying video...