HCM City (VNA) – As a new school year is just around the corner, many superꦰmarkets and bookstores have launched major promotions designed to increase sales of stationery and other school supplies.

For instance, Co.opMart and Co.opXtra supermarkets nationwide are offering sharp discounts on more than 1,000 items, including student uniforms, school bags, notebooks, pens and other school supplies until August 7. School student uniforms such as white shirts, blue trousers and skirts have an average discount of 35 percent. White notebooks, school bags, shoes, and many kinds of school supplies of familiar brands like Sanding, Viettien, Novelty, SGC, Biti’s, Bita’s. Miti, Thien Long and others have their prices discounted by up to 50 percent. Big C is also running a discount programme until August 8, with discounts between 15 percent to 42 percent applied on more than 880 items, including school student uniforms, footwear, notebooks, school bags, and desk lamps, of which many are new models. In addition to discounts on prices, the programme will also apply “buy two get one free” to certain items such as notebooks and notebook covers. Since the middle of this year, Lotte Mart supermarkets have launched attractive discounts on products serving the upcoming academic year. School uniforms are discounted by 15 percent, while pen, ruler, backpack, notebook, pencil and other school items are discount at over 30 percent. Many bookstores in HCM City, including Thang Long, Nguyen Van Cu, and Fahasa, are offering 10 percent to 15 percent discounts on textbooks, notebooks, pen and other items. Price stability programme As in previous years, HCM City is carrying out a price stabilisation programme for school equipment, which will go on until March 2017. School equipment suppliers have been told to increase supply by 15 percent to 30 percent and meet 35 percent to 50 percent of market demand. The programme has attracted the participation of 15 enterprises, who registered to stabilize the price of 28 million notebooks, 1.369 million school bags and backpacks, and 320,000 pairs of shoes. Tran Ba Dung, Deputy Director of Hương Mi Handbags Co., Ltd, told Vietnam News that his company was assigned to offer stablised prices on 600,000 backpacks and schoolbags. The company has developed many new models this year, including terrain backpacks (which are easy to pull up stairs) and anti-hunchback shaping backpacks, he said. Besides providing products under the city’s price stabilisation programme, the company has also supplied products to other provinces and cities nationwide, he said. Its wholesales volume sold to Co.opMart supermarket chain, Fahasa and PNC bookstores and first-level agents increased by 15 percent over the same period last year, he said. Tran Van Tac, Director of Tuan Viet Shoes Co., Ltd, said the company expects to sell 60,000 products in the 2016-17 school year. Dương Chi Thanh, General Director of Vinh Tien Joint Stock Company, one of the largest manufacturers of high quality student notebooks and paper stationeries in Vietnam, said the company has prepared 20 percent more notebooks to serve this school year, of which 40 percent will be sold in the price stabilisation programme.-VNA