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Trade ministry looks to streamline LPG pricing
The Ministry of Industry and Trade is seeking ways to better manage retail pricing of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to prevent unhealthy competition among enterprises while offering more reasonable prices to consumers.
“Retail LPG shops always add between VND5,000 (US$0.3) and VND10,000 ($0.6) to the maximum retail price fixed by the supplying companies,” Nguyen Duc Thanh of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Competition Administrative Department told a forum in Hanoi Thursday.
Some retail shops kept their earlier high prices although the supplying companies had requested that they be lowered, he said.
Thanh said this not only hurt consumers but also flouted norms of healthy competition.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Le Danh Vinh said the ministry was preparing a draft decree on LPG trading, to be proposed to the government by the year end.
VT Gas Company vice director Tran Trung Chinh also requested the Ministry of Interior to approve the establishment of an association of LPG suppliers.
The association could then request enterprises in the field to apply the same retail prices, he said. This would likely to be more effective because the suppliers would be acting together.
Chinh also said local LPG prices, which are adjusted once every month, had not kept up with recent fluctuations in the world LPG market.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, there are 70 enterprises trading in LPG nationwide, with more than 5,000 agents.
Local demand for LPG in 2008 is estimated at around 950,000 tons, only 30 percent of which can be met by local producers. The rest has to be imported.
Thu Hang
Thanh Nien
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