Petrol price down, but transport fees remain unchanged

Transport firms said they are not considering lowering the transport fee even though the petrol price has decreased two times by 1000 dong per liter so far. The said the price decrease of 1000 dong per liter is not big enough for them to ease the transport fee.

Ta Long Hy, Chairman of the HCM City Taxi Association, said no taxi firm has announced the fee reduction so far. Hy also thinks it is not very likely to see taxi firms reduce the fee at this moment.

“In the last few months, taxi drivers were miserable because of the high petrol prices. Therefore, they do not hurry to reduce the taxi fee now even when the price petrol has reduced by 1000 dong per litre,” Hy told Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon.

Hy went on to say that if the petrol price drops further by another 500 dong per liter, enterprises may reconsider the fee. However, this will still depend on the enterprises themselves. Those enterprises, which have made heavy investments in vehicles and whose petrol spending accounts for a only small proportion of their total expenses, will be able to reduce the fee. Meanwhile, the enterprises that have old vehicles will not be able to reduce fee.

Meanwhile, according to Tran Xuan Thanh, Chairman of the Mien Dong Transport Co-operative, which has 50 member companies, the transport fee reduction has been mentioned only by 10 percent of its members. The cooperative plans to gather a meeting this week to discuss new transport fees to be applied next week. However, Thanh said he is not sure if the transport fee will be eased, because this will depend on many factors, including the number of passengers.

“If the number of passengers is low, enterprises will not dare to lower transport fees, because this will make them incur losses,” Thanh said.

Even service users also think that service providers will not ease the transport fee when the petrol price has reduced by only 1000 dong per liter. Nguyen Thanh Ha, Deputy Director of the Thu Duc farm produce wholesale market, told Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon that most of the vehicles that carry farm produce to the wholesale market are running with oil. Therefore, the price reduction is not enough to help reduce transport fees and farm produce prices.

According to Ha, the petrol price reduction would only help reduce the cost for carrying farm produce from the wholesale market to retail markets, because the vehicles are running with petrol.

“However, carriers will not ease the fee now,” Ha said. “When the petrol price increased, they did not dare to raise the transport fee because they feared they may lose clients. Therefore, now when the petrol price decreases, they will not think of reducing fees.”

Tags: Vietnam petrol, Vietnam Petrol prices, Vietnam transport fees