MoT rejects proposal of lowering container service charges

Hanoi (VNA) - The Ministry of Transport (MoT) has rejected a proposal of cutting container loading and unloading service fees at seaports by 30 percent, chief of the ministry’s office Nguyen Tri Duc has said.

The ministry said that the current container loading and unloading service fees of Vietnam were much lower than other countries in Southeast Asia.

Thus, a 30 percent reduction would negatively affect Vietnam’s seaport enterprises. Meanwhile, the reduction would bring benefits to foreign shipping lines because they still collect relatively high fees on Vietnam’s import and export companies.

A representative from Cai Mep International Terminal said that the volume of goods transported through seaports saw significant declines and was forecast to drop by 60 percent in the second quarter of this year, which would significantly erode seaport revenues.

Further cuts in container landing and unloading service fees would be unreasonable in the context that seaport companies were already facing difficulties.

The Ministry also urged the Vietnam Maritime Administration to propose amendments to the Circular 54/2018/TT-BGTVT about seaport service fees for approval in September to ensure harmonisation of benefits.

Previously, the associations of logistics and import-export companies proposed container loading and unloading service fees to be cut by 30 percent so logistics costs could be reduced as imports and exports collapsed globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In another move, several towage service providers recently announced cuts on towage service fees by 10 percent for Vietnam’s ships operating domestically to the lowest level regulated in the Circular 54 to support firms to overcome the difficult time.

The reduction would be applied for three months, starting from May 1.

The Vietnam Maritime Administration has recently urged cuts on towage and pilot service fees for Vietnam’s ships operating domestically by 10 percent.

The volume of goods via seaports started to slow down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the reduction was not significant, Trinh The Cuong from the Vietnam Maritime Administration said. He added that seaport and marine transport companies must support each other to overcome difficulties.

Statistics showed that nearly 161.5 million tonnes goods were shipped through seaports in January-March, up by 8 percent.

However, the volume of goods shipped through seaports in April saw a drop of 7 percent to 53.8 million tonnes./.