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Petrol price hike creating more anxiety
Though realising that the petrol price increase is necessary, people still wish that it would have come later, because they well understand that the petrol price increase will ignite a new wave of commodity price and service fee increases.
Tran Van Thanh, a HCM City resident, said that he is seriously thinking of travelling by bicycle or electric bicycle, as the petrol price has become unaffordable for him.
An old woman, a cigarette vendor at the Bach Dang-Phan Dang Luu crossroad in Binh Thanh district in HCM City, related that she has to take taxi motorbikes when she goes to get products for sale. She is worried that the petrol price hike and the taxi motorbike fee increase will leave no profit for her.
Vietnamese people, who have been tightening their belts due to the fierce price increases, now once again, will have to endure a new wave of price increases. New commodity price increases could seriously beat-down poor people, low income earners.
Taxi firms in HCM City have expressed their concern that the income of taxi drivers will decrease as a result of the petrol price hike. Vo Ba, General Director of Ngoi Sao Tuong Lai Company, the owner of Future taxi, and Nguyen Bao Toan, Deputy General Director of Vinasun, said that a taxi car needs 20 litres of petrol every day, which means that taxi drivers will have to pay VND90-100,000 for petrol. Ba said that if his taxi firm compensates them for the additional sum, he will have to pay VND30mil a day more on average.
Toan at Vinasun said that taxi firms anticipated the petrol price increases, but he thought that the price would rise to VND16-17,000 at maximum. He did not imagine that the price would be VND19,000.
Taxi firms in HCM City said that they are going to ask the city’s taxi firms’ association to hold a meeting to discuss transportation fees. “If taxi firms don’t increase fees, they will incur losses, but if they raise fees, clients will leave us,” Toan said.
The thing that most worries transport companies is that the Ministry of Transport usually takes a long time to approve transport fee increases following petrol price hikes.
The owner of a transport company said that his 46-seat coach consumes 35 litres of diesel for every 100 km. This means that he has to spend VND400,000 more for every trip from HCM City to Pleiku, which is 600 km. As Truong Thanh Company has five buses, it will lose VND60mil a month if it does not raise transport fees.
Nguyen Tien Sy, an official in the Marketing Division under Jetstar Pacific, is worried that airplane petrol will also increase in price. As airplane petrol is a special kind of fuel, the price increase is expected to be bigger than normal petrol. As such, airlines will be burdened once again by a petrol price increase.
VNN
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