Milk prices boil over after Tet
Consumers choose milk products at Big C Supermarket in Ha Noi. Dairy product prices have gone up by an average of 10 per cent since the Tet holiday. — VNA/VNS Photo Tran Viet
HCM CITY (VNS)— Dairy product prices have gone up by an average of 10 per cent since the Tet holiday, milk traders say.
“The price increase applies to both domestic and imported milk products. Prices of all powdered and fresh milk have risen after Tet,” the staff of an online milk shop, www.sua.vn, told VietNam News.
She said firms like Vinamilk, Nutifood and Dutch Lady have already announced new prices, up by around 10 per cent.
Foreign dairy firms have not increased their prices, but they have cut down on their promotion schemes, she added.
The owner of a retail shop in Le Van Luong Street, District 7 said immediately after Tet, her shop had received announcements of new prices from almost all the milk companies.
“They did not say why. However, like previous year, the new price came soon after Tet,” she told Viet Nam News.
Milk companies that Viet Nam News contacted confirmed that they had increased the price, citing higher costs of imported raw material as the main reason.
“We started to increase the prices this Monday. The price of imported raw material after Tet was very high, so we were forced to raise our prices as well,” said a Nutifood representative.
An Abbott representative also affirmed a price increase in March for the same reason.
Vinamilk told the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that they had pushed the prices of some products by about 7 per cent. It was necessary to do so because raw material prices had climbed up by about 20 per cent since the middle of last year.
Such biggest milk producers said they would uphold their commitment to not increase the prices of some products for children and elderly people until the end of March 2013.
A Tuoi Tre report said yesterday that the Price Control Department was examining the increase.
However, a department representative said that it was difficult for them to act.
Although the Price Law had taken affect this year, documents guiding its implementation were yet to be issued, he said.
Moreover, many milk products for children were registered as “nutrition milk,” so their prices could not be controlled right away, he said—VNS