At Phuoc Long ICD Port in HCM City (Photo: VNA) Thang made the statement at a dialogue conference forbusinesses in the field of maritime and inland transport organised by theMinistry of Transport in Ho Chi Minh City on March 22.
“The country has advantages in terms of coastline, seaport system,and inland waterways but we have not exploited these advantages,” he said.
The conference is expected to help ministries and localities toresearch and find practical solutions to take advantage of strengths such asthe country’s long coastline, diverse port system, and rich inland waterwayssystem.
Currently, road transport accounts for 80% of goodstransported and nearly 100% of passengers.
The road infrastructure still has manyshortcomings, while the waterway and maritime systems are very goodin all regions.
The Ministry of Transport wants to receive more comments onmaritime transport development in order to propose policies to encouragebusinesses to invest and develop.
Vietnam has the advantages of a long coastline, is close tointernational maritime routes, and has a dense river system.
The maritime and inland waterway industry plays an important rolein the country’s transportation sector in particular and economy in general.This is a low-cost mode of transport, capable of transporting goods in largequantities, that are over-sized and overweight over long distances.
The majority of the country's import and export goods aretransported by sea. The country's seaport system has received the world'slargest container ships, and 40 major shipping lines in the worldoperate in Vietnam.
The country now has three ports in the list of the 50 containerports with the largest throughput in the world.
Tran Bao Ngoc, Director of the Transport Department under theMinistry of Transport, said the Vietnamese fleet of ships has developedrapidly recently.
Total tonnage increased by 42% over the past six years, from 7.6million DWT to 10.7 million DWT.
The country’s shipping fleet accounts for 100% of domestic outputand 6-8% of the import-export transport market share.
However, there remains a high proportion of general and smalltonnage ships, while the world trend is increasingly using large containerships.
Vu Thanh Hai, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hai AnTransport and Stevedoring Joint Stock Company, said the country has 1,015 watertransport ships but very few container ships.
To maintain the development of the Vietnamese fleet, units need tohave more new fleets in accordance with practical needs, in which priorityshould be given to developing ships with a capacity of 1,700 TEU.
However, the difficulty of developing a fleet todayis that the cost of investing in ships is too high, especially container ships.Loan interest rates at banks are relatively high and the cost of value-addedtax (VAT) for importing ships is up to 10%.
Hai proposed that loan interest rates for businessesinvesting in developing container fleets should be lower while exemption orreduction of VAT on imported container ships and exemption of contractor taxesfor businesses when renting or leasing containers is also needed.
Tran Do Liem, Chairman of the Vietnam Inland Water TransportAssociation, said the proportion of professional water transport vehicles isnot high.
Most private companies only have two or three barges, whichis not competitive enough on the market. Therefore, it is necessary tosupplement the list of vehicles and offer preferential credit for businessesinvesting in ships and vehicles, he said.
Many delegates agreed that the unpredictable market developments,political instabilities, prolonged trade conflicts and climate change hascaused difficulties and challenges for the transportation industry, affectingthe operations of businesses engaged in producing, trading, and distributinggoods.
Therefore, updating and supplementing new mechanisms and policiesin this field is very necessary to better support maritime and inland waterwaybusinesses, they said.
The Ministry of Transport will direct affiliated units to performa number of tasks to facilitate operations of the businesses in this field.
This aims to effectively exploit domestic maritime transport tohelp reduce pressure on road transport and transport costs, and reasonablyregulate the market share of various types of transport.
In addition, it helps maximise the advantages of seaports,especially international gateway ports, to attract large ships transportingimport and export goods on long-distance shipping routes./.
VNA
