Responding to the opinion of the Minister of Finance, the Department of Aviation said that the service fees determined by the Ministry of Transport account for a small proportion and do not have a large impact on air ticket prices.
On May 23, Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that taxes and fees collected according to regulations (the part managed by the Ministry of Finance) account for very little in air ticket prices. Meanwhile, service fees managed by the traffic industry account for a larger proportion in the price composition.
However, today, the Civil Aviation Authority lists that the Ministry of Transport only regulates 3 types of costs including flight service, airport fees and security screening. In particular, flight service costs, according to the assessment of the Civil Aviation Authority, usually account for 6-7% of the total ticket price. This group of costs includes take-off/landing fees, apron rental, check-in counter rental, boarding ramps, commercial ground services, baggage classification, and loading services. Petroleum.
Flight fees range from 60,000-100,000 VND depending on the airport, screening fee is 20,000 VND per passenger per trip.
According to the Department of Aviation, the Ministry of Finance’s revenue accounts for 7.7-8.7%, including import tax on aviation fuel (7%), environmental protection tax on aviation fuel of 1,000 VND per liter, and VAT. with jet fuel and some other services.
In fact, in the airline ticket structure, airlines collect VAT on behalf of the State budget, about 8-10%. As for fees such as airport fees and security screening, companies collect them on behalf of Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), the unit that manages and operates more than 20 airports across the country.
Amounts that make up the price of air tickets. Graphics: Khanh Hoang
Representatives of airlines also affirmed that businesses collect taxes and fees according to the State’s unit price and have no ability to influence them. Therefore, airlines can only reduce operating costs such as labor and aircraft servicing to lower ticket prices.
To reduce input costs, all four airlines (Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet, Bamboo Airways, Vietravel Airlines) proposed that the State consider adjusting and reducing flight operating and landing fees; aviation fuel import fees or night flight surcharge exemption.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam is proposing that the State can regulate and reduce flight costs through reducing fuel import tax, environmental protection tax, and VAT. In addition, this agency also believes that it is necessary to have measures to regulate exchange rates in accordance with market developments because most of the costs of airlines are paid in USD.
Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that taxes and fees are budgets, so many countries want to increase public resources through raising tax rates. For example, at the recent APEC financial conference, the policy of the Finance Ministers of the countries was to increase the power of public finance and taxes to cope with population aging and epidemics. In Vietnam, in the past 4 years, the Government has introduced many policies to exempt, reduce, defer taxes and fees of about 200,000 billion VND a year, “which has exhausted the people’s strength”.
A few years ago, to support airlines heavily affected by the pandemic, the State also had a policy to reduce some taxes and fees such as takeoff/landing fees, and reduce environmental protection taxes by 50%. aviation fuel. However, a representative of a private airline recently said that in reality, the airlines have not benefited much from these policies because during the Covid-19 period, most of the airlines’ aircraft were grounded. Flights dropped sharply.