Illustrative photo
In their letter, the petrol retail businesses complained that many policies have become outdated, causing them great losses. They called for the amendment of Decree 83/2014 and Decree 95/2021 on petrol trading.
The decrees regulate that petrol retail businesses can only sign contracts with one supplier and are often dependent on them, badly affecting their competitiveness.
"That only supplier usually refuses to sell the products ahead of a price hike as they want to wait and get higher profits," the letter said. "As such, we sometimes have to close due to a lack of supply."
The retailers proposed that local authorities allow them to get products from at least three suppliers.
The proposal has received support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which said that the decrees should be amended to allow petrol retailers to source products from two to three wholesalers.
Nearly 100 petrol stations nationwide were closed during the Tet Lunar New Year holiday, claiming they had run out of stock and lacked employees.
A representative of a station in Hanoi said that they could not buy enough stock and therefore had to limit sales.
According to some petrol retailers, since authorities did not fix new retail prices on January 21 as scheduled and instead moved the announcement to February 1, they were selling at lower commissions or even losses after global prices shot up by over USD81 per barrel during the Tet holiday.