He told a conference last Friday the state would not provide wide ranging subsidies for state-owned corporations, as it would set a negative precedent of businesses depending on the state.

“Though textbook prices are a sensitive issue related to every family, their impact on each family was not major,” PM Dung said.

Earlier the EPH, under the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), proposed a price hike of up to 10 percent on all textbooks this year, saying that production costs had risen by 20-100 percent.

If the EPH was not given the go-ahead with the hikes, it had asked for a subsidy to cover projected losses of some VND50 billion (US$3 million).

The government had still not issued a directive as to whether the textbook price hike was approved or not.

As of Friday, the MoET refused to provide any official statement on the issue.

Ministers at the conference focused on the preparation of textbooks for the 2008-2009 academic year.

“The most important issue now is to pay much attention and care to the beneficiaries of social welfare, and the financially disadvantaged students whose families could not afford textbooks,” the PM said.

He added that the government’s policy was to aim for compliance with market prices, but the state was also attempting to control prices of 10 essential types of goods to curb inflation.

Textbooks, however, are not included in the list, though paper is.

Deputy Education Minister Pham Vu Luan said textbooks, with the new higher price tags attached for the upcoming school year, had been retrieved and were waiting for the

PM directive before release, Tien Phong newspaper reported.

Education Minister and Deputy PM Nguyen Thien Nhan, however, contradicted him by saying the new-priced textbooks had been issued [with tags of prices not higher than 10 percent] in accordance with an official government dispatch on March 26.

If the 10-percent price hike proposal was approved, the price of a set of primary level textbooks would rise VND3,300-6,100; a set of secondary textbooks would go up by a maximum of VND9,600; and a high school textbook set would go up by VND12,200 at most.

Concessions and support

The government website stated the EPH pledged to provide adequate textbooks by August 15 for the new school year starting in September.

The monopoly publisher had supported its printing houses some VND6.5 billion (over $402,000) to meet the output target, Sai Gon Giai Phong newspaper reported.

As of May 9, the EPH had printed and stored some 50 million textbooks, half of which had been distributed to provinces.

It also planned to buy 120,000 sets of secondhand textbooks for needy students and school libraries, a local newspaper reported.

MoET pledged a raft of measures to assist students and families in need.

It had also instructed the EPH to implement measures to reduce production and distribution costs.

The ministry also said it would provide free textbooks to 1.6 million financially-disadvantaged students.

It would mobilize some VND8.5 billion ($526,000) worth of textbooks to some 70,000 students born to war martyrs and invalids, and around one million students from poor families with good academic results would get discounts of 10-12 percent.

MoET also requested the EPH to cooperate with local authorities and schools to support needy students.

Information on the price hike proposal was publicly released by the EPH late last month.

Following the public outrage about the increase, the ministry asked the state to support its losses if it didn’t go ahead with the price hike and for instructions from the PM.

However, before any official directive was announced, many EPH bookstores sold textbooks with new price tags, angering many people.

Source: Government Website, Agencies