After government pressure, Vietnam’s taxi companies have announced that they will lower their fares to bring them inline with plummeting global oil prices.
Ta Long Hy, chairman of HCMC Taxi Association said that on January 6, most of the city’s taxi firms had reduced their fares by VND500, bringing the per kilometer price down to VND14,000 - VND17,000 depending on the model of the vehicle, according to Thanh Nien.
Vietnamese economists had earlier said that taxi companies were refusing to drop their fares, calling the hesitation “nonsense.”
While low oil prices have hurt Vietnam’s coffers, the effects seem to be overwhelmingly positive. After a price cut in December, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said that inflation would stay under 3% in 2014, the lowest since 2003.
Economist Ngo Tri Long said in order to take full economic advantage of falling oil prices, the government would need to step in to ensure that companies were dropping their prices accordingly.
“There will be big, positive changes in consumer prices by Tet…the government has to supervise price reductions at businesses which operate largely on fuel, such as transportation, manufacturing and offshore fishing,” said Long.
It took 13 consecutive fuel price cut and coaxing from the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Transport to enact the cuts.
