Milk prices go up 16 times in 3 years

Continuous increase in milk prices has caused financial difficulty for many families.

To date this year, milk prices have risen every 2 to 3 months. Milk producers and importers had attributed many reasons to the rise in milk prices such as higher exchange rates, input costs, expenditures on renewing samples of products, on additional nutrition, etc...

In January of this year, milk firms such as Abbott, Mead Johnson, and Friesland Campina Vietnam increased their prices by 4-9per cent. Two months later, prices of several milk products from Dumex and Meiji surged by 5%. However, the highest rate of increase at 5-10% was made from July to September by Abbott, Friesland Campina Vietnam and XO. This adjustment has created more financial difficulty for many mothers.

An increase by 5-10per cent meant that each milk tin went up by an additional cost of VND20,000-50,000 ($1.02-2.6). A typical child consumes 3-5 milk tins per month. This caused many families problems with extra costs being financial burdens.

Tran Thi Ngan, living at Ward 12, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City said she spent over half of her wages on buying milk for her two children and complained that the spending keeps going up. Now, each month her family has to pay about VND500,000 ($26) more than they did early in the year.

Ngan’s husband has had to find extra work to cover the additional spending on milk and other essential consumer products. “I have to consider very carefully every dong I spend. If milk prices continue rising, I have to continue cutting down spending on other items,” she complained.

Ngan shared that she did not go to any supermarkets for a long time because she’s afraid of over-spending her budget.

Lien, living at District 10, said that her family spent about VND1.5 million ($77) every month on milk for her children. She has to limit her personal spending as much as possible. She said, “In the past, my whole family sometimes went out for dinner but now we have to save money and do not eat out anymore. I also have to cut down my personal spending so that I can have enough money for my children. Many people advised me to buy domestic milk instead of imported milk for my children. However, I am concerned about the quality of domestic milk. Moreover, my colleagues also use imported milk,” said Lien.

Many consumers have a misconception that prices of imported milk products are reflective of quality. Therefore, they prefer to buy the more expensive product. Several milk firms took this opportunity to drive their prices up.

At present, thanks to Circular No 122/2010 requiring that dairy companies register imported powdered milk prices with the Ministry of Finance, many dairy firms seem to have stabilised their prices. However, some have used the short period of time between the announcement of the circular and its application to push up their prices again.