Finance Ministry Yet Hikes Petrol Prices

The Price Control Agency under the Ministry of Finance February 18 turned down requests by some domestic petroleum wholesalers to raise prices of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene at this moment to prevent price increases of a series of commodities and services, said Nguyen Tien Thoa, the agency's director.

 

The ministry, however, is considering lowering import tariffs of fuels by 5 per cent from current 25 per cent, and allowed petrol traders to delay repaying VND1,000/liter of fuel to the government advance February and March as part of efforts to help them reduce losses. 

 

As for kerosene, the ministry has allowed traders to register their own retail prices with the national price supervision taskforce prior to February 20.

 

The world crude oil prices have stayed at low level of US$34 per barrel; however, petroleum prices have increased to US$60 per barrel, petrol importers noted.

 

Gasoline prices increased by US$7-US$8/barrel in the last 20 days of January, Vuong Thai Dung, deputy general director of Vietnam National Petroleum Corp (Petrolimex) said, adding that petrol importers are incurring a loss of VND1,000/liter of gasoline.

 

The government has recently decided to hike domestic retail electricity prices by 8.92 per cent to VND948.5 (US$5.57 cents) per kWh excluding value-added tax (VAT) from current VND860 (US$5.05 cents) from early March. (Local sources)