Retail businesses recommend the Government to amend the Petroleum Decree in the second quarter of 2023

According to Mr. Giang Chan Tay, Director of Boi Ngoc One Member Co., Ltd. ( Tra Vinh ) - the person who filed the petition on behalf of thousands of businesses - currently, retail gasoline businesses are facing many difficulties due to the many shortcomings in the regulations in Decree No. 95/2021/ND-CP on gasoline trading. Most retail businesses are falling into serious losses, and their business has been unstable for too long. The reason is that the Decree has revealed many limitations, which have negatively impacted the operations of retail businesses.

Enterprises believe that this decree was always built to benefit key enterprises. During the process of building Decree 95/2021, retail enterprises were not invited to give opinions, even though they are a very large part of the market, and the Decree also considers retail enterprises to be part of the system of key enterprises. This has led to many mistakes and caused consequences in manipulating goods sources, blocking retail enterprises from purchasing goods when adjusting prices to benefit from price differences and dumping goods when prices tend to decrease.

Retail businesses propose the Government to amend the Decree on petroleum in the second quarter of 2023 - 1 — Petroleum retail businesses continue to petition the Prime Minister about the shortcomings in petroleum business regulations. (Illustration photo: Cong Hieu)

Specifically, before the recent price reduction of more than 1,300 VND/liter for gasoline, the key enterprises increased the discount to 1,000 - 1,200 VND/liter to sell goods to reduce losses and called on retail enterprises to buy goods to reduce losses. When the price tends to increase, they reduce the discount to approximately 0 VND and sell in limited quantities, sell according to progress, and even announce that they are out of stock. But immediately after adjusting the price up and enjoying the difference, they announce that they have goods and sell freely.

This causes retail businesses to suffer losses and always be passive in terms of goods sources and benefits, leading to constant conflicts of interest between key businesses and retail businesses, while in principle the Decree should create fairness and regulation to create tight stability and harmony between these relationships of the participants in the market.

In addition, retail businesses do not receive the standard operating costs and standard profits they deserve, because Decree 95 does not clearly stipulate and does not specify the ratio of standard costs and profits between wholesale and retail. Because the ratios of each stage are not clearly divided, retail businesses are always disadvantaged and suffer long-term losses.

One drawback is that the decree allows suppliers (distributors) to take goods from many places and pour them into the same tank for sale to ensure quality control, while retailers are not allowed to take goods from many sources for fear of not ensuring quality. Because of this regulation, many retailers have established additional family subsidiaries to cope with the need to get many sources of goods, increasing the number of businesses, but the quality does not increase, causing tax losses for the state.

For the above reasons, retail businesses propose that the Government and the Prime Minister need to set up a team to re-evaluate Decree 95 and that the amendment of the Decree also needs to be approved by the Review Council, and consult with economic experts and retail businesses. Businesses hope that the Prime Minister will soon issue a Decree on petroleum no later than the second quarter of 2023 to help the petroleum industry stabilize, be effective, and be fair in all aspects of business activities and ensure national energy security.

" The characteristic of retail businesses is that they are small and scattered everywhere, they are not formed into a unified block and are not properly connected, so they are easily oppressed and bullied, and this is the group with limited knowledge, so they are most vulnerable. That is also a disadvantage and a huge disadvantage for retail businesses. This characteristic needs to be protected by the Government with regulations that must be built on the basis of objectivity and fairness.

We, the retail business community, have repeatedly proposed to amend the Decree in the hope that there will be regulations to ensure sufficient costs for businesses to operate. We even have the intention that when the world's oil prices fluctuate greatly, we do not need profit but only need enough costs to maintain operations to contribute to stabilizing the market... However, we have been waiting for a long time but still have not seen the new Decree issued ," the petition stated.

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