Vietnam to stop subsidizing oil price in 2008

Vietnam will stop subsidizing the prices of oil and petroleum products and some other industrial items such as coal and cement starting from next year, local newspaper Pioneer reported Thursday.

Vietnam has annually compensated some 10 trillion Vietnamese dong (625 million U.S. dollars) for prices oil and petroleum products in recent years, the paper quoted Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung as saying at a local finance meeting on Wednesday.
Stopping the compensation will help save state money to deal with more urgent issues, he said.

The country will also not compensate loss for cement and coal industries, Dung said, noting that Vietnam has not encouraged exports of coal and ores. The country should consider imposing higher taxes on the products to limit their export and save energy, meeting the long-term domestic demand for them.

Besides, Vietnam will gradually limit and eventually stop compensating losses for its electricity industry, which has yet to meet domestic demand, said the prime minister.

Xinhua