Freight management must meet reality

(Baonghean) - Recently, public opinion has been upset that the current way of managing transportation fares has not met the requirements of reality. Responding to public opinion's frustration, the Ministry of Finance affirmed: The management mechanism and actual operation of automobile transportation fares must be implemented according to market mechanisms.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the State always respects the right to self-determine prices and compete on prices of production and business organizations and individuals according to the provisions of law, according to the nature of automobile transport services. At the same time, to protect the legitimate rights and interests of production and business organizations and individuals, consumers and meet the management requirements of the State, automobile transport business units are obliged to declare prices to competent authorities before determining prices and adjusting prices according to regulations.

Vinh bus station

Accordingly, automobile transport units are allowed to self-regulate transport fares and for 3 types: passenger transport by taxi, fixed-route transport and bus transport, transport units are required to declare prices with the competent authority, which is the Department of Transport or the Department of Finance or the District People's Committee as assigned by the Provincial People's Committee. In addition to the above 3 types, based on the actual situation in the locality, the People's Committee of the province or centrally-run city shall consider and decide to add contract-based automobile transport business services, tourist transport business by automobile, and freight transport business by automobile to the list of price declarations in the locality.

The pricing of freight rates varies between automobile transport units depending on the business characteristics of each unit, each time, each scale of operation, and management capacity. In the face of the recent decline in fuel costs, in addition to transport business units that have calculated, reviewed, and declared freight rate reductions, there are also units that have been slow to declare price reductions or have made inappropriate price reductions. The Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport, and localities have issued many documents directing strongly to require transport units to declare fare reductions, strengthen supervision, inspection, and strictly handle violations.

Passengers buy tickets at Vinh bus station

Currently, all localities have documents directing the management of transportation fares, in which according to statistics from the inter-ministerial (information from the meeting on transportation fares on February 22, 2016 at the Ministry of Transport) shows that: By the end of February 19, 2016, there were 978 fixed routes; 67 bus routes and 363 taxi companies that had reduced fares, the reduction rate from 1% - 33.3%.

Thus, the opinion that the current way of managing transportation fares does not meet the requirements of practice is not accurate. Because besides the enterprises that have done well in declaring fare reductions in the past, for those enterprises that have not reduced or reduced fares that do not correspond to the fluctuations in fuel prices, the state management agency, according to its assigned tasks, has taken strong management measures to require transportation units to reduce fares. This is an administrative measure that the management agency does not want, but in order to protect the legitimate interests of consumers, the management agency still needs to intervene.

Therefore, in addition to the efforts of management agencies in building policy mechanisms and in management and operation practices as mentioned above, it is still necessary to have strict compliance with legal regulations by automobile transport business units, the role and close coordination of associations, propaganda of press and media agencies... as well as continuing to improve regulations and procedures related to transport management such as meter inspection procedures, route management, station management...

Regarding the direction of continuing to improve the mechanism for managing automobile transport fares in the coming time, the Ministry of Finance believes that, in order to overcome the limitations of the market mechanism, due to the fact that transport business units have not proactively calculated, reviewed and declared fare reductions when input factors decrease, currently, the Ministry of Finance - Ministry of Transport is synthesizing opinions from localities and relevant agencies on the draft Circular amending and supplementing a number of articles in Joint Circular No. 152/TTLT-BTC-BGTVT dated February 15, 2014 guiding the implementation of automobile transport fares and road transport support service prices. The draft has many new points contributing to creating favorable conditions for transport business units such as specific instructions on how to receive price declaration documents in response to the unit by email, in the case of price reduction declaration, allowing the immediate implementation of the reduced declaration level and continuing to calculate and adjust if any...

At the same time, the regulation requiring transport units to promptly reduce fares in accordance with the decrease in fuel costs will be added. This regulation aims to limit the situation where transport units are slow to reduce fares when fuel prices decrease sharply. In addition, the joint ministries will also recommend competent authorities to amend and supplement to strengthen sanctions for violations of the law on prices and related laws, and continue to improve the mechanism for managing automobile transport fares in accordance with practical requirements.

Red River