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Prices rise despite stabilisation effort
The HCM City Department of Finance has approved a request by food company Vissan, which participates in the city's price stabilisation programme, to increase the price of pork by 5-10 per cent beginning last Friday.
The price of pork sides has since increased from VNÐ89,000 to VNÐ95,000 a kg and that of pork thighs, from VND84,000 to VND88,000 a kg.
In mid-June, Vissan had petitioned the department to allow it to increase the price of some kinds of pork by 10-15 per cent because the cost of live pigs sold in the market was higher than the stabilised price fixed earlier.
Vissan said it was suffering a loss of nearly VND10,000 a kg on pork products because it was selling them at VND82,000-89,000 a kg while market prices had gone up to VND100,000 a kg.
Over the past month, the department had also approved price increases for eggs from VND27,000 per 10 eggs to VND32,500 per 10 eggs.
Participating firms attributed the increase in egg prices to the scarcity of supply from poultry farms because traders were buying more eggs to sell to China for the coming Mid-Autumn Festival.
Nguyen Quoc Chien, head of the department's Price Division, said these approvals of price increase were based on the City People's Committee's regulations on conditions to increase the price of price-stabilised goods.
Under the regulations, the price of price-stabilised goods will be allowed to increase when the input cost of price-stabilised goods have increased at least by 15 per cent and the adjusted price of price-stabilised goods is 10 per cent lower than market prices.
The price hike of several price-stabilised goods following the increase in market prices shows that several participating companies have not been able to maintain the rates promised under the price stabilisation programme, the Thoi Nay newspaper reported.
It said this was because several participating firms had not secured enough supply of goods by investing in production, and had to depend on suppliers. It was also difficult for them to stabilise prices when their suppliers also increased their prices, the newspaper reported.
Vinh Thanh Dat Food Company, for instance, sells about 4 million eggs under the programme every month, but it has not invested in a poultry farm to produce them. It purchases them from poultry farms in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta.
Ba Huan Company now supplies about a million eggs a month. Of this, 20 per cent are produced in the company's poultry farms and the remaining bought from other poultry farms.
Ba Huan advances money to several poultry farms and contracts to buy their eggs, but farmers insist on selling at market prices anyway, making things difficult for it.
Speaking at a meeting held last month to review results of the price stabilisation programme this year, Le Ngoc Dao, deputy director of the Department of Industry and Trade, told participating firms to actively invest in increasing the production of essential goods so they could fulfil their commitments under the programme.
vietnamnews
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