Cargo shipping has seen positive growth in the first six months of the year, with 254.8 million tonnes handled via the country’s seaports, up 17 per cent on last year. The Việt Nam Maritime Administration (under the Ministry of Transport) reported that 8.7 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of freight containers were processed, up 28 per cent against the same period last year, and fulfilling 57 per cent of the target set for 2018. During the period, 38 Vietnamese container ships carried about 69.9 million tonnes of cargo, representing a year-on-year rise of 9 per cent, according to the administration. Foreign journeys According to Nguyễn Đình Việt, deputy director of the Việt Nam Maritime Administration, despite the positive growth in the first half of the year, there remains inherent weaknesses that need to be addressed. “The Vietnamese sea fleet still doesn’t have any container ships capable of long-distance journeys, such as to the United States, Europe and Africa. These journeys are usually undertaken by foreign fleets,” Việt told Thời báo Kinh tế Việt Nam (Vietnam Economic Times). The Vietnamese fleet currently commands about 10 per cent of the market share and mostly handles short-distance transport such as China, Japan, South Korea, or within the Southeast Asian region. To push the development of maritime transport in a sustainable direction, there needs to be a strong logistics system. Currently, there are nearly 297,000 firms in the country registered to operate in the logistics sectors, with 0.43 per cent of them, or around 1,300, are providers of maritime logistics services. “There are a decent number of domestic logistics firms in Việt Nam but their market share is fairly small, with most of them only providing a certain service-related part in the logistics chain, or acting as agents for foreign maritime shipping companies,” Việt said. Most ports are small-scale, operating inefficiently, and lacking modern loading and unloading infrastructure. Country-wide, there are currently 68 active maritime towing firms who are operating without much difficulty, Việt said. After a period of unhealthy competition between the towing firms in the last few years, the transport ministry has issued a pricing framework for loading and unloading cargo tasks, to prevent price dumping and ensure equality between businesses. Weak connectivity Nguyễn Văn Công, deputy minister of transport, said that many import-export firms are still not fully aware of the importance of logistics. They usually only understand logistics as purely transport, without knowing that it contains many different activities. “In the last five or six years, the transport ministry has implemented its logistics development project, aimed at promoting multimodal transport [cargo transport done by a single carrier but using different transport modes], in which sea routes and inland waterways will be fully utilised,” Công said. However, connectivity between modes of transport has not seen considerable improvement. In rail freight transport, even with the key route of the North-South railway, there is a lack of appropriate warehouses or equipment to provide services such as storage, loading and unloading, delivery, or short-distance transportation – especially tailored for cargo containers. “This shortage must be corrected before we could hope for future logistics development,” deputy minister Công stressed. In the last half of the year, the transport ministry has asked the customs department to facilitate legal document revisions, especially in terms of pricing schemes to prevent arbitrary price hikes by foreign companies. In the future, efforts and resources would also be spent on dredging operations to ensure uninterrupted traffic in seaports. Việt Nam has a total of 42 public navigation lines stretching 935.9km and 10 specialised navigation lines, with major maritime shipping routes including Hòn Gai – Cái Lân, Hải Phòng in the north and Đà Nẵng or Vũng Tàu – Thị Vải in the south. Source: VNS
The Vietnam Maritime Administration said cargo shipping in the country grew 17 % YoY to 254.8 million metric tons during H1 2018 , while 150 million TEU was processed , an increase of 10 % over 2017 . Despite the positive figures , the industry is being held back by a lack of long - distance travel among the country 's fleet , coupled with inefficient , small - scale shipping and a lack of connectivity between domestic modes of transport , the agency said .