Since December 2012 to February 2012, cooking gas prices has been lifted for 7 times, total VND 80,000 a cylinder of 12kg. However, the constant increasing in price has caused hardship for consumers, especially in during difficult economic situation and high inflation as current.
The irregularity increase in price of cooking gas, recently, Department of Finance has decided to set up an inspection team in order to control of price, control the formation of prices, check the price registration, declaration and listing the price of some distributors.
As planned, there are five large distributors will be tested during the period of time from 09/02/2012 to 21/02/2012 because most retail distributors are depending on their imported price. There are less than ten marjor gas importers in Vietnam, meanwhile the retail gas distributors are too much.
Under pressure of public on gas prices keeping to increase recently, Mr. Nguyen Si Thang, chairman of Vietnam Gas Association explained, due to in February 2012, gas prices in the world market has increased by 145 USD a tonne to USD 1,025 a tonne, the highest price so far. Vietnam Gas Association also sent a doccument to Ministry of Finance on requesting to reduce gas tariffs to 2% from current 5%.
Mr Thang said some gas companies dumped their price in the bid to attract the customers, but they were bankruptcy afterthat because of insufficient cost for survival. As similar, some distributors with higher list price could not compete with other distributors with cheap or moderate list prices. Shell gas, Total gas, Unit gas, Ell gas, VT gas, Đại Hải gas...vv are the major distributors in Vietnam but now some of them have to withdraw share from domestic market.
In late 2011, retail gas price from major cooking gas distributors sold at VND370,000 a cylinder of 12kg, but in the first two months this year, retail price has soared to VND440,000-445,000 a cylinder of 12kg, even VND460,000-470,000 a cylinder of 12kg.
Mr Thang added that, there are two kinds of cooking gas in the domestic market include light and heavy gas, but heavy gas is not as efficient as light one because a small volume remains the bottom can not use.
Customers keep caution on choosing gas with famous brand in order to avoid forging gas or poor quality gas.
Source:Xangdau.net
