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The Vietnamese Ministry of Finance decided to further reduce petroleum import tariffs by 2%-6% beginning December 22.
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| Petroleum price hikes tough on customers (illustrative photo) |
As a result, import tax on gasoline is halved to 6% from the previous 12%, on diesel reduced to 2% from 5%, on kerosene to 6% from 10%, and on fuel oil to 5% from 7%.
These tax levels will be continued to be applied after January 1, 2011, until the ministry has new decisions.
The tax reduction is aimed to support local petroleum traders who are reportedly enduring losses of over VND2,000 (USD0.1) per litre of oil and gasoline.
However, representatives from a number of Vietnamese petroleum firms said the ministry’s tax cut decision comes too late and will only help to deal with part of their difficulties.
Vuong Thai Dung, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam National Petroleum Corporation (Petrolimex), was cited by vneconomy.vn as saying that, “In this situation, the petroleum import tax should be zero.”
This is the third cut on petroleum import tariffs so far this year with the first on April 21. The second came on December 1 when the Ministry of Finance decided to lower gasoline import tax to 12% from 17% and to 5% from 10% for diesel oil and other oil products.