Petrol prices make largest monthly drop

LONDON (Reuters) - Average retail petrol prices made the largest monthly drop over the past month, the Automobile Association (AA) said on Tuesday.

The average petrol prices dropped by 11.54 pence in the month to Monday, the association said in a press statement.

The drop was the largest ever, surpassing the 7.9 pence drop recorded for August-September 2006.

The AA said the average price on Monday was 94.86 pence per litre compared with about 106.4 pence in mid-October.

"There has been a huge drop in the price of petrol over the past month that dwarfs anything before," Luke Bosdet of the AA said.

Diesel prices dropped by an average 8.86 pence litre to 108.82 pence as of Monday from 117.68 pence in mid-October.

Petrol and diesel prices have been falling as international crude oil prices have dropped by more than 60 percent to below $52 a barrel from a peak above $147 hit in July.

The tumbling petrol prices pushed British annual consumer price inflation down for the first time in more than a year in October and at the fastest pace since the series began in 1997, official data showed on Tuesday.

The Office for National Statistics said consumer price inflation dropped to 4.5 percent year-on-year in October from 5.2 percent the previous month, taking it to its lowest level since July.

(Reporting by Ikuko Kao, Editing by Peter Blackburn)