Revising Law on Prices to remove policy loopholes and create transparency in the state management of prices

	Amending the Law on Prices: Improving capacity of enterprises to practice price appraisal
	Amending Law on Prices: Priortise to apply Law on Prices if there is a difference in regulation

Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc reports on the Price Law (amended) project. Photo: Quochoi.vn

40 groups of goods and services priced by the State

According to Minister Ho Duc Phoc, after nine years of implementation, Law on Price has come into practice and achieved many positive results and showed problems and shortcomings, especially the consistency between the Law on Prices and other specialized laws related to prices. To fully institutionalize and comply with the Party's policy on developing the market economy under regulatory of the State, the Price Law must reasonably stipulate the role of state management; and overcome institutional problems and policy gas and the irrationalities of the legal system that are hindering the development process; create transparency in the state management of prices, publicizing enterprise information; and clearly define the responsibilities of competent organizations and individuals.

According to the Government's report, the draft Law on Prices (amended) consists of eight chapters and 72 articles. The draft Law inherits and concretizes the provisions on the scope and subjects of application of the existing Law; amends and standardizes terms to suit practice and relevant laws, creating a legal basis to ensure consistency in practical application; and removes regulations on specialized inspection of prices to ensure unified implementation under the Law on Inspection.

In addition, the draft law adds provisions in Article 3 on the principle of applying the Law on Prices with other relevant laws to avoid overlaps to enhance the uniformity in the legal system on price

Regarding provisions on the rights and obligations of organizations and individuals trading goods, services and consumers, the draft law inherits the provisions described in the current Law. The assignment and decentralization of state management of prices have not been specified but now is detailed by the draft Law, specifically: state management of prices, tasks and powers of Government, Ministry of Finance, ministries, ministerial-level agencies and People's Councils and People's Committees of provinces are clearly defined.

Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc

Presenting new points of the draft Law on Prices (amended), the Minister of Finance said that it was proposed to remove from the List 14 goods and services that do not conform to four criteria, to determine the goods and services that are priced by the State as set out in the current Law and are priced by the market price mechanism, including: support services to ensure flight operations, security screening services; a number of contents of the procedures for granting certificates of land use rights and ownership of houses and other land-attached assets; services in the field of securities provided by securities service providers; domestically produced cigarettes; remuneration for auction services; planning services; brokerage remuneration, services of sending workers abroad to work; notary remuneration; Lease or transfer for a definite term the right to exploit state property as infrastructure works; groundwater; services of using the sale area at the market; social housing invested and built by individuals or households; water surface; service using the sea area.

In addition, the Government proposed adding two items to the list of goods and services priced by the State: textbooks and goods and services for defence and security tasks and task assignments for defence and security units and enterprises. Particularly for the service using expressways invested by the State, under the policy of the National Assembly, the Government is to urgently study and carefully evaluate to have a separate project to submit to the National Assembly for the promulgation of a Resolution on implementation. Thus, the list of goods and services priced by the State is 40 groups of goods and services.

Control the textbook prices

Presenting the report on reviewing the Price Law (amended) project, Chairman of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee Nguyen Phu Cuong emphasized the need to issue the Law on Prices (amended) and pointed out the limitations of the Law on Prices 2012.

Regarding the scope of the amendment, the Finance and Budget Committee proposes that the drafting Board clearly define: the scope of regulation of this Law and; its relationship with related laws towards non-duplication and non-contradiction, leading to legal conflicts. In addition to complying with this Law, price management in several specific fields, such as land, healthcare, etc., will also be governed by other laws, such as the Land Law, the Law on Health Examination and Treatment, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to have specific references to create a basis for application, transparency and easy access.

Regarding the list of goods and services priced by the State, Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee Nguyen Phu Cuong said that compared with the current Law, the draft Law on prices adds many goods and services priced by the State. Therefore, it is proposed to review carefully the list of goods and services priced by the State to ensure the role of state management while respecting the market factor. Furthermore, the draft law adds criteria for price determination to ensure specificity and avoid arbitrary application, affecting production, business and consumers. Therefore, for some specific fields, it is necessary to carefully evaluate the reality of having regulations to overcome the inadequacies in the past time.

According to Mr Nguyen Phu Cuong, Textbook prices are an essential item of which prices have a wide scope of influence, directly affecting people, including low-income people. Therefore, the Finance and Budget Committee proposes to control the price level of this item to avoid negative impacts on consumers and to create a tool to protect the legitimate interests of the people, especially the poor.

Revising Law on Prices: Strengthening price declaration methods VCN- The draft Law on Prices (amended) has provided more specific regulations on price declaration to serve ...

Moreover, the Finance and Budget Committee proposed to specify the legal value of the valuation results of the Valuation Council, the valuation certificate of the enterprise and to carefully review each article of the Law to ensure clarity, transparency, feasibility in an application, and consistency of provisions in the draft Law. Furthermore, in addition to the leading unit of the Price Appraisal Council, it is proposed to clearly define the legal responsibilities of the other units directly related to the price appraisal, especially the head, and strengthen the mechanism to supervise the price appraisal by competent state agencies.