Ministries, agencies differ on inventory index
02-11-2012 13:01:14+07:00
Ministries, agencies differ on inventory index
The inventory indexes announced by the General Statistics Office (GSO) have been described by ministries as “excessively pessimistic.”
Extremely pessimistic figures would have bad impactsAt a working session gathered by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) recently, GSO reported that the inventory index of the processing industry had increased by 20.3 percent by October 1, 2012, in comparison with the same period of the last year.
GSO noted that the inventory index was still high, but there have been signs of gradually decreases in recent months. The index had increased by 29.4 percent by May 1, then 26 percent by June 1, 21 percent by July 1, 20.8 percent by August 1 and 20.4 percent by September 1.
The industries with high inventory indexes include seafood processing, preservation and seafood products (up by 23.9 percent), livestock feed production (32 percent), garments (48 percent), fertilizer production (55.1 percent), plastic-made products (56.5 percent), cement production (53 percent) and steel manufacturing (38 percent).
However, the representatives of the ministries present at the working session expressed their disagreements with the statistics. And Deputy General Director of GSO affirmed at the working session that GSO did not make a mistake, because it calculated the indexes in accordance with the international practice.
As for the cement production, for example, GSO said the inventory index has increased by 53 percent. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Construction believes that the “fearful figure” does not truly reflect the situation of the industry.
An official of the ministry said that in the first 10 months of the year, the cement productivity reached 46.5 million tons (it plans to churn out 56 million tons this year), fulfilling 80 percent of the yearly plan.
The ministry has been reported by the cement manufacturers that their inventories have reached 2.6 million tons, equal to the 15-18-day productivity. The figure, according to the official, is quite normal, if considering the characteristics of the cement industry.
Meanwhile, GSO has reported the inventory index up by 51.3 percent, which may make people worried about the high oversupply.
The official went on to say that cement manufacturers all understand that the market demand remains very weak; therefore, they have been maintaining production at a moderate level. This can explain the inventories cannot increase sharply.
If the inventories are really big as reported by GSO, it would be necessary to scale down the cement production. If so, an expert has warned, Vietnam would seriously lack cement to implement the plan to replace asphalt with concrete in the industrial construction.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade has also stated that it does not believe the inventory indexes released by GSO. While GSO releases very high indexes, businesses all have reported normal statistics, which makes it very difficult to draw up reasonable policies.
Bui Ha from the Ministry of Planning and Investment has suggested reconsidering the indexes, emphasizing that unsalability is now considered the biggest problem of businesses. Therefore, policy makers need accurate figures to set up reasonable measures to deal with it.
GSO says it does not make mistakes
Deputy General Director of GSO Nguyen Bich Lam has denied the fact that GSO made a mistake when calculating the indexes, affirming that GSO has been following the international practice.
In the last ten years, from 2000 to 2010, the inventories always accounted for 3-5 percent of GDP. In 2011, the figure was 3.2 percent of GDP, the lowest level since 2007.
Since the beginning of 2012, businesses have scaled down the production because they anticipated the low market demand. Why has the inventory index still increased so sharply by 20.3 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year?
vietnamnet
