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Commodities, services prices to decrease on petrol price fall
The government will supervise the prices of the commodities and services which bear direct impacts of the petrol price decrease. It is expected that taxi fees will decrease by 5%, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Huu Hao stated.
The oil price has been decreasing in the world’s market and it will likely slide below $80/barrel. So please tell us the roadmap of petrol price adjustment.
The oil price is really volatile, so I think that predictions are just predictions. The world’s prices are controlled by many factors, including political situations, speculation and reserves. No one can be certain about the price in the future. It would be very good if the petrol price decreases to below $100/barrel, but we dare not expect a better scenario.
If the world’s oil price keeps decreasing, we will consider re-imposing the import tax in order to collect money for the state budget. If enterprises still can make profit after we raise the tax, the government will consider lowering the retail petrol price further.
If the world’s price falls to below $110/barrel, the suitable import tax rate would be 5%.
Please tell us about the business performance of key petrol importers recently, while the oil price has been decreasing.
Prior to July 21, when the world’s price was overly high, and the domestic price remained unchanged, importers incurred heavy losses. The importers had incurred the loss of VND3tril by the end of July on petrol sales. If counting the losses from kerosene, diesel and mazut sales, the losses would be VND14tril.
However, the world’s market shows many optimistic signs. If the market keeps stabilising as currently, importers will be able to get money to offset the losses from now to the year’s end.
On August 14, when the ministries announced the VND1,000/litre petrol price decrease, they said that the price was slashed by VND1,000 only, because petrol importers still had big stocks. How about this price cut?
A big online newspaper reported that petrol importers made the profit of VND4,500-5,000/litre and it was not false information. However, this was just the profit on paper, not the profit in reality. Enterprises have to have an inventory volume big enough to ensure 20 days of consumption. That explains why the prices decreased sharply at the beginning of August, but importers could not make profit: they had big stocks.
However, as we have calculated, with the second price adjustment, importers still can earn VND1,200-1,400 on every litre, which is big enough to offset the losses.
Could you please tell us about domestic petrol consumption?
Every year, Vietnam consumes 15mil tonnes of petrol and oil products. The figure is increasing by 10% year after year. The demand for petrol and oil products has been increasingly high as the result of the higher number of vehicles. We are going to ask the National Assembly to impose a luxury tax on petrol and oil products in order to limit consumption.
After the August 14 price adjustment, taxi firms said they would not adjust transport fees because the VND1,000/litre price decrease did not make sense. What will happen with the transport fee after the second petrol price decrease?
Our management agencies will supervise and control the prices of all commodities and services which bear direct impacts of the petrol price. As per our calculation, taxi fees will decrease by 5%.
We will send documents to taxi and transport firms, asking them to adjust transport fees to protect consumers’ benefits. It would be unreasonable to see the transport fee unchanged while the petrol price had decreased. We will set up inspection missions which will punish service providers who do not provide services at acceptable rates.
VNN
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