China will slightly hike gasoline and diesel prices starting Friday, the first increase since the fuel pricing scheme was reformed in March.

The retail price of both gasoline and diesel will be raised by 95 yuan (15.32 U.S. dollars) per tonne, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planner, said Thursday.

The benchmark retail price of gasoline will be increased by 0.07 yuan per liter and diesel by 0.08 yuan per liter.

As part of government efforts to promote market-oriented pricing for energy resources, NDRC introduced a new pricing mechanism in the domestic market in March to better reflect global market changes.

It shortened the fuel price adjustment cycle to 10 working days from 22 working days, scrapped the 4-percent floating band for oil price changes and adjusted the varieties of crude used to calculate price changes for domestic oil products.

Domestic fuel prices will not be changed if global oil price changes are less than 50 yuan per tonne, according to the new pricing regime.

After the new scheme went into effect, the NDRC skipped the first adjustment window on April 10, as global prices changes were less than 50 yuan. Two weeks later, it cut the price of gasoline by 0.29 yuan per liter and diesel by 0.34 yuan per liter.

Friday's increase is the smallest in years, as global price changes have passed 50 yuan by a small margin.

Wang Zhen, a professor at the China University of Petroleum, said the recent adjustment indicates that the government is serious in implementing the reform and that it will obey market principles in future economic activity.

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