Ministry of Industry and Trade maintains proposal to let businesses decide on gasoline prices

In the third appraisal dossier of the draft decree on petroleum business sent to the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Industry and Trade maintained the same view as in the draft in April that the State will not regulate domestic fuel retail prices. Instead, the key enterprises and distributors of petroleum business will calculate and decide on retail prices based on factors announced by the State.

In particular, the management agency will announce the average world price every 7 days and some fixed costs, including foreign exchange rates, special consumption tax, VAT, import tax. Based on this data, the main enterprise will add business expenses, standard profit, to calculate the maximum selling price. The retail price to consumers must not be higher than this maximum level. The retail price in mountainous areas, remote areas and islands can be increased by a maximum of 2% compared to the selling price of gasoline.

Key traders in the petroleum business shall notify and declare selling prices to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Finance after the traders announce the selling prices of petroleum.

Ministry of Industry and Trade maintains proposal to let businesses decide on gasoline prices .

Key traders of petroleum business and petroleum distributors shall notify and declare selling prices to the Department of Industry and Trade, the Department of Finance, and the Market Management Department in the locality where the trader conducts petroleum business activities after the trader announces the retail price of petroleum.

In case the market price of petroleum products fluctuates abnormally, causing a major impact on the socio-economy, production, business, and people's lives, or in case a competent authority declares a state of emergency, incident, disaster, natural disaster, or epidemic and the market price of petroleum products fluctuates abnormally, the Ministry of Industry and Trade shall preside over and coordinate with the Ministry of Finance and relevant ministries and branches to report to the Government for consideration and decision on applying price stabilization measures in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Prices.

Unlike the previous draft, this time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade did not propose a specific level for the cost of petroleum business, the standard profit that businesses can add to the retail price (1,800 - 2,000 VND per liter or 4 - 20%).

Instead, the authorities will announce the initial base rate of circulation costs, reviewed every three years. After that, businesses will calculate and adjust these costs annually according to the consumer price index (CPI). The standard profit remains fixed at 300 VND per liter or kilogram of gasoline.

Other expenses such as transportation, insurance, loss, loading and unloading... are reported by the management agency every 3 months, before the 20th of the 3rd month, unless there are unusual fluctuations that require the approval of competent authorities. The key petroleum enterprise must submit an independently audited report on the figures of these expenses for the previous 3 months to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade believes that with the current mechanism for regulating gasoline prices, state management agencies and businesses have to go through too many steps. Gasoline traders are not proactive in deciding on retail gasoline prices in the distribution system, but instead rely on the base price announced by the state management agency and then follow it...

"This reform helps petroleum traders and price management agencies not to calculate and periodically announce standard business costs as they do now. Enterprises must announce prices in accordance with regulations, and state management agencies supervise the price announcements of enterprises," the Ministry of Industry and Trade stated.

In addition, the new point of the third draft is that there is no separate regulation on the Petroleum Price Stabilization Fund. Accordingly, it aims to regulate petroleum price stabilization similar to the stabilization of prices of other items in the List of goods and services with price stabilization.

The stabilization of gasoline prices is carried out in accordance with the provisions of the 2023 Price Law: In case the prices of gasoline products fluctuate abnormally, causing a major impact on the socio-economy, production, business and people's lives, the Ministry of Industry and Trade shall preside over and coordinate with relevant ministries and branches to assess the level of fluctuations in the market prices of gasoline products, the level of impact on the socio-economy, production, business and people's lives; send a document to the Ministry of Finance for synthesis to submit to the Government for consideration and decision on the price stabilization policy.

vtv.vn

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