Establish a regulatory ceiling to strengthen state management of textbook prices.

In the Government's report sent to the National Assembly Standing Committee's monitoring delegation on innovation of general education programs and textbooks, the content of textbook prices was mentioned.

Accordingly, the National Assembly Standing Committee's monitoring delegation proposed to assess the impact and influence of the discount rate in textbook publishing costs on current textbook prices. The monitoring delegation believes that the current discount rate for textbooks and reference books is too high.

Build ceilings according to regulations to strengthen state management of textbook prices, picture 1 — The Government has directed the establishment of a ceiling price according to regulations to strengthen state management of textbook prices (illustrative photo source: internet).

Regarding this proposal, the Government has the following opinion: According to the provisions of the 2012 Law on Prices and Circular No. 56/2014/TT-BTC dated April 28, 2014 guiding the implementation of Decree No. 177/2013/ND-CP guiding the Law on Prices, the Ministry of Finance (Price Management Department) shall preside over receiving and reviewing documents declaring textbook prices and reviewing the contents of price declaration documents to serve the work of price stabilization, state management of prices, inspection and examination according to the provisions of law.

Publishers are responsible before the law for the correctness and appropriateness of the textbook price plan declared to the Ministry of Finance.

The Government is directing the Ministry of Education and Training to coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to establish a ceiling price for textbooks according to regulations to strengthen State management of textbook prices.

This is a solution to manage textbook prices and reduce textbook distribution discounts.

Regarding the proposal "Evaluation of the implementation results of the task of providing textbooks for school libraries in mountainous areas, islands, ethnic minority areas, areas with difficult socio-economic conditions, and students with disabilities.

It is necessary to fully calculate and comprehensively evaluate the impact of allocating the state budget to purchase textbooks for school libraries for shared use," the Government said. The State has issued and implemented policies to support students in disadvantaged areas, in which students in ethnic minority areas, mountainous areas and islands are fully entitled to use state support money to ensure there are enough textbooks for students.

Specifically, Article 18 and Clause 10, Article 20 of Decree 812 stipulate an increase in the level of support for learning costs from VND 100,000/student/month to VND 150,000/student/month (equivalent to VND 1,350,000/year) to help policy beneficiaries in difficult circumstances, including high school students, students studying at regular education institutions under the general education program in extremely disadvantaged villages/hamlets, communes in Region III of ethnic minority and mountainous areas, extremely disadvantaged communes in coastal and island areas, to receive additional funding to purchase books, supplies and learning tools, especially new textbooks.

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