Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – After a long day transporting passengers recently, Nguyen, an e-hailing driver, was disheartened to discover that he had spent half his earnings on fuel.
“I earned about 240,000 Vietnamese Dong ($9.11) for 7-8 hours of driving and paid 120,000 Vietnamese Dong ($4.56) for gasoline,” Nguyen, a motorcyclist who connects with passengers through the locally developed super app Be, told Al Jazeera.
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“You can’t survive in the city with this kind of money.”
In Vietnam, the fallout from the U.S.-Israel war against Iran is taking a toll on many gig workers.
The Southeast Asian country typically sources about 80% of its crude oil from Kuwait, but Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted shipments, pushing up fuel prices.
Diesel prices have more than doubled and gasoline prices have risen by nearly 30%. So in cities like Ho Chi Minh City, which has more than 7 million motorcycles, getting from point A to point B has become an increasingly expensive proposition.
“Gas prices are so high that many drivers are turning off the apps and going home and not working,” Nguyen said.
“After today, we will turn off the app and stop working for a few days to see if the price goes down or if the government is helping in some way.”
The Vietnamese government has introduced a series of emergency measures to alleviate the damage to its citizens.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh announced last month that environmental taxes on diesel, gasoline and jet fuel would be suspended until April 15 to stabilize prices.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting researcher from Vietnam at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said authorities must take action to stem the growing discontent among citizens.
“There is a lot of dissatisfaction and frustration about the rising cost of living in Vietnam because the price of gasoline is everything,” Giang told Al Jazeera.
“It is not only necessary in terms of making the population feel comfortable about rising gasoline prices, but at the same time it will keep macroeconomic stability intact given the turmoil outside Vietnam.”
Signs of tension are growing across the economy, despite the government sacrificing about $273 million in revenue through tax cuts.
Public transportation was full in major cities, and domestic airlines such as Vietnam Airlines and VietJet Air also drastically reduced their flights.
“As a very open economy, Vietnam is very vulnerable to international shocks,” Giang said.
Gig workers were particularly exposed to the double whammy of excessive fuel consumption and minimal labor protections.
“Their income can fluctuate due to factors beyond their control,” Do Hai Ha, a researcher at the University of Melbourne who has studied performance platforms in Vietnam, told Al Jazeera.
“They have no opportunity to negotiate with the platforms.”
Mr. Do said that many drivers had no choice but to work long hours “because they were excluded from labor protection and were not guaranteed minimum wage or overtime pay.”
Companies are also feeling the crisis.
Anh Dao, who collects bus fares for Ho Chi Minh City’s No. 13 bus, said that despite raising ticket prices by 3,000 Vietnamese Dong ($0.11), bus operators were losing money due to the surge in fuel prices.
“We cannot stop the buses because we have already signed a contract,” she told Al Jazeera.
A fisherman in the coastal province of Binh Thuan, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Ho Chi Minh City, has been desperately trying to find a cheaper option to power his basket boat due to rising fuel costs.
“Now fuel prices are rising, which is having a big impact,” he told Al Jazeera, asking not to be named. Brokers he deals with have been citing a lack of demand to justify offering lower prices for their catches, he said.
“What would normally sell for VND800,000 ($30) is now selling for VND650,000 ($24),” he said.
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For some low-income families, rising costs are changing their daily lives in other ways.
Uyen Pham, communications manager at the Saigon Children’s Charity, said she saw the tension firsthand after traveling in the Mekong Delta region for a week.
“Some parents have pointed out that the price of bottled cooking gas has almost doubled,” Pham told Al Jazeera.
“Most of our beneficiary families have always relied on wood burning stoves or a fuel mix of wood and gas to save money. With recent price increases, they are now restricting their use of gas even more severely and are relying almost entirely on wood to save money wherever possible.”
For many parents, rising fuel costs mean less time with their families.
“Many parents living in remote areas have to leave their children with grandparents to work in the city,” Pham said.
“Rising fuel prices directly increase the cost of commuting, while wages for manual labor remain stagnant. This reduces the take-home pay and, in some cases, reduces the ability to travel home to see their children.”
For the Hanoi government, price volatility has strengthened its focus on energy independence, said Giang, the visiting researcher.
“The long-term issues that have arisen from this crisis are very important issues regarding Vietnam’s strategic autonomy in terms of energy dependence, especially when we are a net importer of oil,” he said.
Policymakers will need to “more aggressively accelerate Vietnam’s energy independence by building more refineries,” Giang said. “Currently we only have two refineries, which is not enough for the Vietnamese market.”
Authorities are scrambling to find short-term solutions as long-term solutions are likely to take years to bear fruit.
Late last month, a delegation from Vietnam’s Prime Minister and Ministry of Industry and Trade visited Vietnam’s largest refinery, the Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical Complex, in the coastal city of Thanh Hoa, about 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City.
During the visit, officials said the refinery, which supplies about 40% of Vietnam’s oil needs, will urgently need to find alternative sources of crude oil as current supplies are expected to run out by the end of May.
The war with Iran also appears to be reshaping at least some domestic investments.
Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest conglomerate, notified authorities last month that it wanted to halt plans to build the country’s largest liquefied gas-fired power plant and instead put the money into renewable energy projects, according to a letter reported by Bloomberg and Reuters.
In the letter, the company cited a “significant risk that the war could lead to higher fuel prices for LNG power projects.”
Meanwhile, Duy, who works at a cafe behind a gas station in Ho Chi Minh City, is relieved that the government’s fuel tax cut is expected to reduce the price of gasoline by about a quarter and that of diesel by about 5 percent.
“I usually pay 100,000 Vietnamese dong ($3.80) a week for gas, but a few days ago, at the peak of the price, it was double that,” she told Al Jazeera.
“It affected my income.”
Additional reporting by Nguyen Hao Thanh Thao
