Since early this year, domestic customers have actually been shocked with the fluctuations of gas price. There have been a lot of reasons leading to the gas price hike and domestic customers should seek measures to “live together with flood”…
Gas price fluctuations
According to statistics, the retail prices of gas in the first two months of the year were adjusted five times, including four for sharp increase and one for low decrease.
Particularly, gas prices increased by VND 24,000 per tank on January 1, 2012 and continued rising by VND8,000 per tank on Jan.5, 2012, due to the 2%-5% increase in import tax.
Gas prices also continued growing by VND42,000 per tank in early February and then reached a sharp surge of VND52,000 per tank in early March.
Gas is in the list of commodities enjoying price
stabilization
Thanks to the State’s effort in reducing gas import tax to zero% from 5%, gas prices dropped by VND10,000-VND16,000 per tank
The domestic gas price structure depends on the world gas prices. This is also one of the main reasons leading to the current price hike.
In recent months, the world gas prices have continuously increased, due to the rise of consumption demand.
January’s world gas prices grew by US$85 per ton compared to December of last year. In February, they surged by US$145 per tom against January. And in early March, they saw an increase of US$180 tons compared to February.
In addition to, two gas processing plants of Dinh Co and Dung Quat now only meet around 40% of the domestic gas demand.
The next reason is that there are too many gas wholesale companies, creating a severe competition among them. The functional agencies also find difficult to control them.
According to statistics, there are now around 100 gas wholesale companies while the domestic gas demand is only around 1.2mln tons of gas a year.
“Living together with flood”
Before the escalating gas prices, many families have turned to electric, honeycomb coal, firewood cookers as alternatives.
But, there are still many disadvantages from the above measure. Honeycomb coal stoves have many ill effects while the use of firewood causes smoke, dust with a high risk of fire and explosion.
The price of a set of electric cookers is about VND1mln-VND3mln. Besides, users will face power cuts in the dry season. The use of electric cookers is also inappropriate to the State’s current policy calling for electricity saving.
Hence, one of the effective measures before the escalating gas prices is to correctly use gas cookers.
It is known that Vietnam’s gas demand has increased sharply. In 2000, the demand was 400,000 tons, up 350,000 tons compared to 1991 and reached 1.2mln tons in 2010.
As predicted, the country’s gas demand will reach around 1.5 mln tons in 2012 and 2mln tons in 2020.
Reported by Le Thanh-Translated by K.T
