The chairman of Hanoi Supermarket Association, Vu Vinh Phu, explained about how low-income people are unable to gain benefits from price stabilisation programmes in Hanoi.
Even though three months have passed since the price stablisation programme started, it has not proven to be as effective as expected.
Poor people can hardly access the stabilisation programme
Many people said the price stabilisation programme in Hanoi, which was meant to give firms loans without interest, is showing shortcomings. What do you think about this view?
I think that this method is not in trend with the modern market and will lead to unfair competition between different supermarkets in the programme and those which are not.
According to the regulations, when market prices increase by 5-10% or decrease more than 10%, the supermarkets will report to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. But the wait time can be as long as a week, and a lot of changes in the market could have been made.
Even supermarkets don't dare to display much commodities in stabiliation list because they fear of hoarding. We've invested VND318 billion (USD15.3 million) into this ineffective programme while we have great difficulties in collecting state budget revenue.
So you said that we need to adjust prices in real time and get more enterprises join in the system in order to improve this programme, is that your real opinion?
It's true. To keep prices stable, we must have at least 50-60% of the market share. But in reality, prices are decided by enterprises that aren't in the programme which has 90% of the market share.
This year, authorities in Hanoi only adjust prices for seven essential goods such as rice, pork, vegetables and sea foods. Do you think their decision is reasonable?
I think it's a waste. For example, vegetable prices are pretty low anyway and prices of other goods are quite stable. Meanwhile not only does seafood need huge investment, it's also not on daily meal plan. Enterprises can use this chance to acquire loans but not for the stabilisation purposes.
HCM City has implemented new policies in which they act as a bridge for enterprises to get preferential loans at banks. Should Hanoi follows this method?
Yes. We should stablilise prices base on the supply and demand relationship. The money should be spent on production and manufacturing. Especially on agriculture because when the supply is up, the demand as well as their prices will come down. I also think we need to stock some commodities. When a item's price increase sharply, we'll release the stock immediately to reduce the prices.
