CRASH OF CRUDE OIL AND ITS IMPACT ON PETROL PRICE OF ASIAN COUNTRIES

Crude oil popularly known as black gold is one among the vital energy resources throughout the world and with the rapid economic development the crude oil demand among the Asian countries has been rising rapidly, where in this perspective Asian countries form to a large chunk of crude oil consumers. The recent instability among the crude oil prices have been moving intensely since the surge of pandemic caused by Covid 19, so in response to the pandemic a study has been carried to scrutinize the behavior of retail petrol prices of select Asian countries in association to crude oil prices followed with an factual analysis linked to secondary source of data. The central argument of the present paper is to find the relationship of rapid changing crude oil prices with the retail selling price of petrol product among the select Asian countries. The study is conducted by taking the retail petrol prices of five major Asian countries viz. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The present research has collected time series data from the available secondary sources named statista and global petrol prices website for crude oil and petrol prices for a period of 4 months i.e. from 17th Feb 2020 to 25th May 2020. To investigate the impact correlation and regression has been utilized. The study came up with an interesting outcome of strongly negative and insignificant impact of crash of crude oil on the retail petrol prices in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh followed with a slight positive and significant impact of crash of crude oil on the retail petrol prices in India, Pakistan from the period 17th Feb 2020 to 25th May 2020 since the outbreak of Covid 19