Considering retail prices of gasoline
A source said the price regulator is leaning towards reducing import tax, which has been kept at 4-5% for nearly two months.
The Ministry of Finance is considering options for dealing with domestic retail gasoline prices, as world prices have increased in recent months.
VnE quoted a source from the Ministry of Finance as saying that the price management agency is leaning towards reducing import tax, which has been kept at 4-5% for nearly 2 months. Previously, the import tax on gasoline and oil was kept at 0% for the previous 10 months.
Besides import tax, the regulatory agency currently has two other tools to deal with the problem of increasing input costs: the price stabilization fund and retail price adjustment. While businesses have just had their price stabilization fund increased by 550-870 VND per liter of gasoline since January 19, the retail price of this product has been kept at 20,800 VND (for RON 92 gasoline) since the end of August 2011.
The Ministry of Finance has proposed considering options for handling domestic gasoline prices in the context of import prices of this commodity from Singapore increasing since the beginning of the year and especially strongly in the first half of February.
According to petroleum bulletin No. 47 of the Vietnam National Petroleum Group (Petrolimex), petroleum prices on the world market mostly increased in the first half of February 2012, after a sharp increase in January.
Brent crude oil prices averaged $116.06 per barrel during this period, up 3.35% or $3.76 compared to the first half of January. WTI oil prices meanwhile fell $2.43 to $98.88 per barrel.
Petrolimex cited the forecast of a group of 36 world industry analysts showing that the average oil price in 2012 will be 99.1 USD/barrel for WTI oil and 107.3 USD/barrel for Brent oil, higher than 95 USD and 110.91 USD/barrel respectively in 2011.
Meanwhile, the price of finished petroleum products in the Singapore market – Vietnam’s main petroleum import market and used as a reference for calculating prices for the domestic market – increased simultaneously. In particular, the price of Ron92 gasoline reached its highest level in the past 9 months at 129.85 USD/barrel on February 13.
In the first half of February, Ron92 gasoline price increased by 5.18%, kerosene price increased by 2.29%, diesel price increased by 2.04% and fuel oil (FO 180 cts) increased by nearly 1% compared to the first half of January.
Previously in January, the price of Ron92 gasoline in Singapore increased by 8.23% compared to December, kerosene price increased by 3.12%, diesel price increased by 3.89% and mazut price increased by 7.76%./.
According to VOV
