Gasoline companies are paying for Monday’s price hike as Ho Chi Minh City residents are switching from motor scooters to bikes and buses to avoid the new costs.
Le Thi Anh Man, deputy general director of Saigon Petro, said the company’s sales had dropped about 30-40 percent since the increase in gasoline prices.
Though deputy director of Petrolimex Region II Company Nguyen Van Canh said his client stations in HCMC were still buying the same amount of gas, he admitted that sales in the provinces, where people are generally poorer, had fallen 15 percent since the price hike.
M., a salesman at a Petrolimex station in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 3, said the number of customers at his station had declined noticeably and that they were buying far lower quantities of gas per trip.
Customers used to buy at least two liters of gas for their motorbikes but now most of them asked for only VND20,000 (US$1.19) worth of gas, he said, adding that some even insisted on one liter exactly (VND19,000), demanding VND1,000 in change.
Going electric
Kieu Tien, a telephone operator at the HCMC information directory, said she just bought a new electric bicycle to ride to the office, even thought the trip already took her 30 minutes by motorbike.
She said it used to cost her VND35,000 to fill up her motorbike every four days but after the gas hike on Monday she had to pay VND53,000 for the same amount of gas.
After riding her electric bike to work for just a short time, Tien said the bike paid for itself with the money she saved from not buying gas.
Many electric bicycle shops along Vo Thi Sau Street in District 3 said their sales had increased since the surge in gas prices.
Shop 152’s sales have jumped 50 percent as the store is now selling eight bikes per day.
Two shops selling Asama brand electric bikes in District 3 and Tan Binh District said they’ve sold out of popular bike models and many customers had paid deposits for bikes that were on order.
Asama is a popular brand from Taiwan.
According to Asama’s Vietnam sales department, the company manufactures 250-300 electric bikes in the country every day, but the number was not enough to meet the needs of the Vietnamese market since the gas hike.
Secondhand bicycles are also selling quicker than before.
Many shops on Bui Huu Nghia Street in Binh Thanh District are refurbishing old bicycles to meet the new demand for gas-free vehicles.
A bike shop owner named Luong said average secondhand bicycles cost only VND250,000, while higher quality Japanese bikes could cost up to VND1 million.
He said his customers were mainly average-income blue-collar workers who didn’t need brand new bikes.
Catching the bus
Nguyen Huu Nhan, deputy head of Rang Dong Bus Cooperative, said more people were now buying monthly bus passes than before.
Phung Dang Hai, general director of the HCMC Transport Cooperative Union, said the number of passengers on the cooperative’s buses had increased by 5-10 percent over the first three days this week.
The cooperative was expecting a 30 percent increase in passenger transport once major road projects were completed, Hai said.
According to the HCMC Public Transport Management and Administration Center, the number of bus passengers in the city generally increased by about 10 percent after every gas price hike.
Source: Tuoi Tre
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