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Retail prices to remain stable
Prices of commodities in supermarkets will remain unchanged in the next few weeks, while transport companies will adjust their charges in the wake of the petrol and oil price hike of VND500-700 per litre on July 2.
Deputy General Director of Fivimart, Vu Thi Hau, said that goods prices in supermarkets would remain unchanged at least for the first half of July.
Echoing Hau, the Deputy General Director of the BigC, Nguyen Thai Dung, also said that his supermarkets had not received any announcement to raise retail prices from suppliers.
Suppliers must inform supermarkets one or two weeks before they make price hikes, Dung said.
Dung believed that if there was a price hike in the next few months, it wouldn’t be very high. He explained that prices of most domestic products had been stable since April, even though the country had raised petroleum prices four times since then.
The petroleum price increase of 5 per cent this time would not make prices of commodities on the domestic market differ strongly, as petroleum accounted for only roughly 5-7 per cent of the total production costs for many industries, Dung said.
He said that the Government’s policies to provide a 4 per cent interest rate subsidy to businesses had also helped producers significantly cut input costs, helping them keep their product’ prices stable despite petrol price hikes.
Dung affirmed that BigC would not accept any irrational requirement to lift prices from suppliers.
Fivimart’s Hau also said that suppliers would have to scrutinise costs before making any price hikes to be able to successfully compete in the domestic market.
Transport costs up
In contrast to the consumer goods market, after the petroleum price hike, several transport companies had lifted their freight rates in line with the increased price of petroleum.
The rest, which had not raised their freight prices proces yet, could also follow the move in the next few days, said Chairman of the Viet Nam Transport Business Association Nguyen Manh Hung.
Hung said that transport companies had to increase their freight fees, as petrol and oil prices had surged too high, by roughly 30 and 20 per cent, respectively, from the beginning of the year. Petroleum accounted for roughly 40-45 per cent of the total costs of the transport industry, Hung said.
However, Hung said that the association would ask its member to make the price rises reasonable.
Excluding several taxi companies in HCM City, which had raised their fees by VND500 per kilometre since last week, the remainder were also planning to adjust their charges after this petrol price hike.
General Director of Future Taxi Vo Ba said that his agency would consider lifting the fees over the next few days, as it was unable to keep the rates at VND9,800 per kilometre for seven seat cars and VND9,000 for four seat cars, since the recent petrol price hike had been raisedby VND3,200 per litre since the beginning of the year.
vietnamnet, vietnamplus
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