National Assembly delegates express their opinions on maintaining or removing the ceiling price for domestic air tickets

Delegate Tran Van Lam (Bac Giang)

Delegate Tran Van Lam (Bac Giang) said that the content of great interest in the Law on Prices (amended) at this session is the ceiling price and floor price of air passenger transport services.

Up to this point, the draft Law on Prices (amended) still determines that for domestic air transport, the ceiling price will be kept and the floor price will be removed; this is based on the criteria and principles set forth and determined in the draft Law to make the selection.

Delegate Tran Van Lam emphasized that, in general, the Law on Prices is a tool for the State to manage and regulate prices. In a market economy, prices are determined by the market, formed voluntarily on the basis of market principles and rules. The State only intervenes to regulate and manage in specific conditions. The first characteristic is that there is a monopoly element that distorts the supply-demand relationship. The second characteristic is that in conditions of natural disasters, unusual weather factors have disrupted the supply-demand relationship, requiring State intervention.

According to delegate Tran Van Lam, although there are many airlines participating in domestic air passenger transport services, the monopoly has not been completely eliminated. On some routes, there is fair competition, relatively transparent and clear; but there are still many routes that are operated by only one airline.

“Even if we call on other airlines to operate these routes, they will not participate. The reason is that the passenger traffic on these routes is limited, so it would be difficult to operate them,” said delegate Tran Van Lam.

In addition to the monopoly on some domestic routes, there is also a seasonal factor at certain times and periods. Although passenger traffic has increased dramatically, the ability to regulate to meet that sudden increase in demand is limited and cannot be changed easily like some other passenger transport services. Therefore, the aviation industry is now competitive and transparent, but it is still not possible to completely eliminate the monopoly factor. According to delegate Tran Van Lam, the State still needs to intervene to a certain extent, otherwise there will be some routes with prices that are too high, not ensuring the interests of consumers.

“Floor prices are also to protect consumers in the event of competition. The nature of floor prices is to prevent unfair competition, but there is currently no such competition. In fact, recently, some airlines have offered zero-dong prices for promotional purposes only with a certain number of seats. This depends on many factors and airlines ignore the profit factor to set competition goals.

Based on considering many factors of consumer benefits, especially the competitiveness in the environment of air transport enterprises, the law-making agency proposed to change this price management method from no price to a price ceiling, eliminating the floor price," delegate Tran Van Lam shared.

Delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga, Deputy Head of the National Assembly Delegation of Hai Duong province

From another perspective, delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga, Deputy Head of the National Assembly Delegation of Hai Duong province, said that the proposal to remove the ceiling price for aircraft is something that airlines really want, because when the ceiling price is removed, airlines will not be restricted by barriers to flexibly adjust prices. However, the people are worried because if the ceiling price is removed, there will be times when airfares will increase and people will not have enough money to buy them.

“To operate according to the market mechanism, the proposal to remove the ceiling price of air tickets is reasonable. However, besides this, it is necessary to create conditions for healthy competition between airlines and carefully review to avoid unreasonable price increases and people suffering losses. Besides air tickets, we have many other items that do not have a price ceiling, but everything is still fine, so removing the ceiling price of air tickets will not affect the general operation much,” said delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga.

According to Tin Tuc Newspaper