Ha Noi (VNA) – Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has issued a directive to compensate the financial losses of petroleum importers in a bid to ease their business conditions.

Under the directive, the Prime Minister asked the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to compensate the losses of enterprises that imported oil in 2006 and 2007.

According to the directive, the State would not compensate losses for gasoline imports in 2007, but the MoF would instead consider delaying import tariffs on gasoline till global prices decrease to a level which would allow importers to recoup last year’s losses.

The Prime Minister also asked both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Trade to grant importers the right to determine domestic petrol prices subject to the volatility of the global price under provisions set out in Decree 55/ND-CP.

Experts said that compensation was difficult due to the State’s limited financial resources. Last year, the State failed to recover 8 trillion VND (500 million USD) in losses.-Enditem