Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam – After an extended day of ferrying passengers back and forth lately, e-hailing driver Nguyen was dejected to seek out he had spent half of his earnings on gasoline.
“I drove for round seven or eight hours, making round 240,000 Vietnamese dong [$9.11] after which I paid 120,000 Vietnamese dong [$4.56] on petrol,” Nguyen, a motorcyclist who connects with passengers by way of the regionally developed super-app Be, informed Al Jazeera, asking to not be recognized by his actual identify.
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“I can’t survive with this sum of money within the metropolis.”
In Vietnam, the ripples of the US-Israel warfare on Iran are hitting many gig staff exhausting.
The Southeast Asian nation usually sources about 80 p.c of its crude oil from Kuwait, however shipments have dried up amid Iran’s efficient blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, driving up gasoline costs.
Diesel costs have greater than doubled, whereas petrol costs have risen virtually 30 p.c, making getting from level A to level B an more and more costly proposition in cities equivalent to Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, house to greater than 7 million bikes.
“As a result of the petrol worth is so excessive, so many drivers are turning off the app, going house and simply not working,” Nguyen mentioned.
“After at this time, I’ll flip off the app and cease working for just a few days to see if the worth goes down or if the federal government helps in any manner.”
A Be driver picks up a passenger at Thu Duc Metro Station in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam, on March 30, 2026 [Govi Snell/Al Jazeera]
Vietnam’s authorities has rolled out a collection of emergency measures to cushion the blow for residents.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh final month introduced that an environmental tax on diesel, petrol, and aviation gasoline can be suspended till April 15 to assist stabilise costs.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese-born visiting fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, mentioned authorities had been pressured to behave to stave off rising disgruntlement amongst residents.
“There are loads of complaints and frustrations about rising residing prices, as a result of gasoline costs are every part in Vietnam,” Giang informed Al Jazeera.
“It’s not solely obligatory by way of making the inhabitants really feel aid concerning the rise of gasoline costs, however on the identical time, it would maintain the macroeconomic stability intact, given the turbulence exterior Vietnam.”
Regardless of the federal government sacrificing an estimated $273m in income by way of the tax reduce, indicators of pressure are mounting throughout the financial system.
Public transportation is stretched to capability in main cities, whereas home carriers equivalent to Vietnam Airways and Vietjet Air have slashed flights.
“As a really, very open financial system, Vietnam is tremendous susceptible to worldwide shocks,” Giang mentioned.
Gig staff have been notably uncovered because of the double whammy of heavy gasoline consumption and minimal labour protections.
“Their revenue is changeable as a consequence of elements past their management,” Do Hai Ha, a analysis fellow on the College of Melbourne who has studied Vietnam’s gig platforms, informed Al Jazeera.
“They haven’t any likelihood to barter with the platforms.”
Many drivers have had no alternative however to work longer hours as they’re “excluded from labour safety, so there’s no assure by way of minimal wages or additional time pay”, Do mentioned.
A commuter refuels at a petroleum station in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam, on March 27 [Govi Snell/Al Jazeera]
Corporations, too, are feeling the crunch.
Anh Dao, who collects fares on Ho Chi Minh Metropolis’s bus route 13, mentioned the bus operator has been dropping cash because of the surge in gasoline costs, regardless of elevating ticket costs by 3,000 Vietnamese dong ($0.11).
“As we already signed the contract, we can not simply cease working the buses,” she informed Al Jazeera.
For one fisherman within the coastal area of Binh Thuan, about 200km (124 miles) from Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, rising gasoline prices have prompted a frantic seek for cheaper choices to energy his basket boat.
“Now that gasoline costs are rising, it’s having a big effect,” the fisherman informed Al Jazeera, asking to not be recognized by identify. The middlemen he does enterprise with have been citing weak demand to justify providing decrease costs for his catch, he mentioned.
“What I used to be normally in a position to promote for 800,000 Vietnamese dong [$30] is now solely promoting for 650,000 Vietnamese dong [$24],” he mentioned.
Households saved aside
For some low-income households, the rising prices are reshaping each day life in different methods.
After a weeklong journey to the Mekong Delta area, Uyen Pham, a communications supervisor for the Saigon Kids’s Charity, mentioned she has seen the pressure firsthand.
“A number of mother and father famous that the price of bottled cooking gasoline has practically doubled,” Pham informed Al Jazeera.
“Most of our beneficiary households have all the time relied on wood-fired stoves or a hybrid of wooden and gasoline to economize. With the current worth hike, they’re now strictly limiting their gasoline utilization even additional, relying virtually fully on wooden to chop each potential expense.”
For a lot of mother and father, the rising gasoline prices have additionally meant much less time with household.
“Many mother and father in distant areas should go away their youngsters with grandparents to work in cities,” Pham mentioned.
“Rising gasoline costs straight enhance their commuting prices, whereas guide labour wages stay stagnant. This pinches their take-home pay and, in some instances, reduces how usually they will afford to journey house to see their youngsters.”
For the federal government in Hanoi, the worth volatility has intensified the give attention to higher vitality independence, Giang, the visiting fellow, mentioned.
“The longer-term query this disaster has enacted is an important query concerning the strategic autonomy of Vietnam by way of vitality dependencies, particularly once we are a web importer of oil,” he mentioned.
Policymakers might want to “extra aggressively speed up Vietnam’s vitality independence by constructing extra refineries,” Giang mentioned, “as a result of now we solely have two refineries, which isn’t sufficient for the Vietnamese market.”
With long-term options more likely to take years to return to fruition, authorities are scrambling for short-term fixes.
Commuters anticipate the practice at Thu Duc Metro Station, in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam, on March 30, 2026 [Govi Snell/Al Jazeera]
Late final month, Vietnam’s prime minister and a delegation from the Ministry of Business and Commerce visited on the Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical Complicated, the nation’s largest refinery, in Thanh Hoa, a coastal metropolis about 1,500km (932 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh Metropolis.
Throughout their go to, officers mentioned the refinery, which provides about 40 p.c of Vietnam’s petrol wants, would urgently want to seek out various sources of crude, as present provides had been anticipated to expire by the top of Could.
The warfare on Iran additionally seems to be reshaping not less than some home funding.
Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest conglomerate, final month knowledgeable authorities that it needed to halt plans to construct the nation’s largest liquefied gas-fired energy plant and put the funds in the direction of a renewable vitality venture as an alternative, in accordance with a letter reported by the Bloomberg and Reuters information companies.
Within the letter, the corporate cited “the numerous threat of excessive gasoline costs for LNG energy initiatives” because of the warfare.
Within the meantime, Duy, who works at a restaurant tucked behind a Ho Chi Minh Metropolis petrol station, is feeling some aid after the federal government’s gasoline tax reduce, which authorities projected would cut back petrol costs by about one-quarter and diesel costs by about 5 p.c.
“I normally pay 100,000 Vietnamese dong [$3.80] per week on gasoline, however on the peak of the excessive costs just a few days in the past, it was virtually double that,” she informed Al Jazeera.
“It affected my revenue.”
Further reporting by Nguyen Hao Thanh Thao
