Under Directive No 104/ 2008/TT-BTC, the ministry will take measures to stabilise the prices of these commodities when necessary, particularly in the case of natural disasters, fires, epidemics, economic crises or monopoly price-fixing.

The list includes petrol, steel, gas, fertiliser, cement, rail fares, drugs and veterinary medicines, pesticides, rice, salt, milk, sugar and animal feed.

The ministry will control these prices through market and authoritative measures, including adjusting supply and demand, goods, and financial and monetary measures if they increase by 15-20 per cent within 15 consecutive days. These measures can be applied for all of the commodities listed except for petrol.

For petrol, the Government will continue to follow Decree No 55/2007/ND-CP issued in April 2007. According to the decree, the Government allows petrol distributors and dealers to set retail prices. However, the Government continues to monitor and can adjust prices if they become too high. It will also interfere if there are signs of a monopoly or stockpiling of oil to raise prices.

Under this decree, businesses who want to increase petrol prices must register with finance, and industry and trade ministries one or two days in advance. The two ministries can ask the companies to reconsider their decision if the price is not justifiable.

As for the list of commodities, if their prices are considered unreasonable, the finance ministry will be able to suspend prices set by businesses and force them to sell their products at the last price considered reasonable.

The ministry will take measures against violators including fines, confiscation of profits from price increases or the withdrawal of business licences.

Under the new directive, other than the 15 commodities listed, businesses dealing in 20 other products and services were also instructed to register their prices with authorities. Another eight products were instructed to have price labels on the package.