Vietnam News Network

The Price Control Agency under the Ministry of Finance has announced that no retail price increases will be applied for diesel, mazut and petrol at this moment. Furthermore, in order to help enterprises to reduce losses, the state is considering slashing import taxes on fuels by 5%.

Petrol price increases at this moment would certainly lead to the price increases of a lot of commodities and services. The prime minister, several days ago, signed a decision on raising the electricity price, which will take effect on March 1, 2009.

The Ministry of Finance, while considering lowering the import taxes of fuels by 5%, also decided that enterprises would not have to pay VND1,000 per litre of petrol sold to the state budget in February and March.

As such, every litre of A92 petrol will still be sold for VND11,000, and a litre of diesel VND10,500. As for kerosene, enterprises have the right to register their own retail prices with the petrol and oil price supervision taskforce.

The ministry has given the official statement after local newspapers reported that domestic petrol distributors are considering asking for the petrol price increase. Petrol distributors said that the petrol price increases in the world’s market have caused loss to them as they have to sell petrol at VND11,000/litre.

Vuong Thai Dung, Deputy General Director of Petrolimex, said that petrol prices increased by $7-8/barrel in the last 20 days of January 2009 alone. While crude oil prices have been decreasing, petrol prices have increased by 38% recently, and mazut 5%.

Dung from Petrolimex said that petrol importers are incurring the loss of VND1,000/litre. State officials confirmed that petrol price needs to be raised by VND500-1,000/litre to be able to bring profit to importers.