Provinces and cities are gearing up for the coming Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday to ensure an adequate supply of essential goods with the COVID-19 pandemic still developing globally.

Consumers shop at BigC supermarket in Hanoi. Provinces and cities
were gearing up preparation for Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday

Tran Thi Phuong Lan, Deputy Director of Hanoi Department of Industry and Trade, said large companies have begun to stockpile goods for Tet and preparing plans to supply the capital city when there was a sudden increase in demand.

Lan said the volume of goods in the warehouses and big companies is large enough to supply the capital city’s market for 60-90 days.

Some big retailers, such as Central Retail Group which runs the BigC supermarket chain, BRG which runs Hapro, Intimex, SEIKA mart and BRG Mart, and Co.opmart have increased their stockpiles of necessary food and foodstuff by 300% to 500% compared to normal days.

Lan said that the capital has set up groups to keep a close watch on the market development and to facilitate the distribution of goods to meet citizens' demand.

The city also provides 2,156 locations for enterprises to open temporary warehouses or mobile points of sale, besides maintaining the operation of the retail system, including 142 supermarkets, 27 shopping centres, 1,700 convenience stores, 455 markets and 11,382 e-commerce websites.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to early implement the price stabilisation programme for essential goods, Lan said.

The city is focusing on promoting the diversification of the distribution system to ensure goods would reach consumers in the fastest and the most convenient way while creating favourable conditions for producers and distributors to access preferential loans for production and business expansion and to stabilise prices.

Goods categories in the price stabilisation programme included food, foodstuff, meat, seafood, egg, processed food, fresh vegetable and fruit, sugar, cooking oil, spice, milk, confectionery and beverage products.

The southern province of Dong Nai is also gearing up the price stabilisation programme for 12 product categories, including rice, noodles, canned processed food, chicken, pork, eggs, sugar, cooking oil, spice, dipping sauce, textbooks and student notebooks.

Supermarkets, shopping centres, producers and distributors in the southern province have also started to build production plans in line with the anticipated rise in demand around Tet holiday to ensure adequate supply as well as preparing stockpile plans to prevent a shortage of goods or price fever.