Vietnamese exporters pay the penalty for heavy reliance on foreign ships

Aug 20th at 12:56

20-08-2012 12:56:38+07:00

Up to 90 percent of exports are carried by foreign shipping firms. Therefore, Vietnamese exporters have suffered heavily when the carriers have unanimously raised fees and imposed new unreasonable surcharges.

Domestic shipping fleet has no job, earns no money

Do Xuan Quynh, Secretary General of the Vietnam Shipowner Association, said Vietnam now has about 40 container ships, but with small tonnage of less than 1000 TEU, not eligible for long distance shipping.

In the past, when Vietnam still didn’t have deep water seaports, big foreign ships could not dock at the ports to handle cargo. In such circumstances, the Vietnamese small ships were useful. They carried cargo from Vietnam to Hong Kong and Singapore, from which cargo would be transferred to foreign big ships to be carried to the targeted destinations.

However, nowadays, as foreign big ships can enter the newly built deep water seaports like Cai Mep, the small ships have become jobless. In principle, the ships still can earn money by serving domestic clients on domestic routes.

However, since Vietnam has opened its maritime shipping market to foreigners. A lot of foreign shipping firms have arrived in Vietnam, which have been competing with domestic shipping firms. As such, Vietnamese ships only have petty jobs to do. They just can roam the nearby sea areas, while the long distance routes have been dominated by foreign shipping firms.

There have been no official statistics about the volume of Vietnamese exports shipped by domestic shipping firms. However, a report by the Shipowners’ Association presented at a recent workshop in the north, showed that 20 percent of exports and 20 percent of imports can be handled by Vietnamese firms.

Especially, 100 percent of container consignments to Europe, America or Africa have been shipped by foreign firms. This explains why the shipping fees have been decreasing in the world, but have been increasing continuously in Vietnam.

Especially, foreign shipping firms always try to impose a lot of unreasonable kinds of fees and surcharges on Vietnamese enterprises. Meanwhile, Vietnamese enterprises have to accept all kinds of fee, or leave cargo at the ports.

“The situation, once again, shows the problems in the development programming,” Quynh said.

“Enterprises have been developing spontaneously because there has been no scientific development programming created by the thorough research on the link between transport and trade activities, on the cooperation between cargo owners and ship owners. Every man for himself,” he added.

Tidbits offered to foreigners

Also according to the Shipowners’ Association, Vietnam exports 1.2-1.5 million containers of goods every year, which makes Vietnam a big and lucrative market. However, the tidbits do not fall into the hands of domestic firms.

Domestic shipping firms even are not capable to carry bulk cargo, such as rice exports to far markets, while they can only reach out to Asian countries.

A lot of ships do not have the tonnage heavy enough to go to the open sea, while others have been left idle because the owners cannot afford the operation expenses. They even do not have money to take insurance policies, cannot make ownership registration or cannot communicate in foreign languages.

Quynh said that six or seven Vietnamese ships have been seized overseas since the beginning of the year because of many reasons, including the financial debts, while 40 ships have been detained after the verification by the destination port authorities.