Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Sinh Nhat Tan has just signed a report to the Government on promulgating a Decree replacing Decree 83 on petroleum business and decrees amending and supplementing Decree 83.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in the past 10 years, Decree 83 has been supplemented and amended three times to create competition in the market. However, up to now, many regulations on petroleum business must be considered for amendment and supplementation to meet reality. Therefore, it is necessary to consolidate the regulations into a decree with new contents to facilitate implementation for businesses.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade also said that along with the rapid growth in the number of focal enterprises, many new problems have also appeared such as: Distributor traders are able to buy gasoline from each other, leading to the formation of a secondary market. in the distribution (intermediary) stage, increasing costs in this stage.
“In order to reduce the State's intervention in deciding the selling price of businesses, the new draft will take the approach that the State will only announce the 15-day average world petroleum price and some fixed costs such as exchange rate. foreign currency prices, business expense ratios and corporate profits, taxes...
The focal enterprise will self-announce the maximum selling price based on the price formula prescribed by the State. The enterprise's selling price must not be higher than the maximum price according to the prescribed formulah", said the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade said that it will tighten the management of warehouse rentals of key enterprises.
This agency believes that letting key businesses decide their own selling prices will help them compete on costs to gain market share. In particular, businesses are allowed to sell lower than the maximum selling price according to the price calculation formula, thereby eliminating the application of zone 2 gasoline selling prices for businesses.
In case the ratio of business costs and profits of the enterprise increases, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will preside over and coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to report to the Prime Minister to consider making adjustments to suit reality. Price adjustments will be made every 15 days.
The Stabilization Fund has many shortcomings but is still maintained
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in the process of developing a new draft decree, there are opinions about the current appropriation and use of the Petroleum Price Stabilization Fund not in accordance with the provisions of the Price Law. Therefore, a new mechanism is needed to replace the current operating mechanism and needs to be public and transparent so that businesses can predict and decide to announce prices according to regulations.
“To concretize the provisions of the Price Law on stabilizing gasoline prices, the new decree will specifically stipulate cases of appropriation, expenditure and use of the fund. The Ministry of Industry and Trade will send a document to the Ministry of Finance to summarize and report to the Government to decide on appropriation, expenditure and use of the fund., draft proposal.
To manage ambiguous trading activities between businesses, the new draft decree also adds regulations related to the fact that petroleum businesses will continue to be allowed to use warehouses but will be more strictly managed. Specifically, when a focal enterprise rents a warehouse, it will have to connect petroleum storage data and petroleum business data with the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The focal enterprise will have 24 months to perform data connection from the time the new decree takes effect.
Another notable point of the decree is that the focal enterprise is responsible for providing a total petroleum source of at least 100.000 m3/ton of petroleum/year. This is a regulation aimed at tightening the problem of many key enterprises being licensed but not implementing or being given the privilege of not having to assign import quotas according to regulations.
Another regulation that businesses agree with is the proposal to not allow distributors to buy and sell gasoline from each other. In fact, the disruption of petroleum supply in 2022 has shown that many petroleum distributors and distributors have been buying and selling gasoline in circles, disrupting the supply and making it difficult to control the source. bow.
Therefore, the draft decree adds regulations that distributors can only buy gasoline from focal enterprises, and are not allowed to buy gasoline from each other. The new draft also proposes 3 forms for retail businesses: acting as gasoline retail agents for wholesale businesses or distributors; receive the right to retail gasoline; or buy petroleum from wholesalers or distributors for retail sale at stores.
