Up to 95% of Vietnam’s goods are exported by sea, but shipping rates are increasing rapidly, causing many difficulties for businesses. In particular, for low-value agricultural, forestry and fishery products, freight rates account for a large percentage of the value of goods.
Therefore, although the export results in the first 6 months of 2021 have impressive growth but are not similar to the business performance, some enterprises have to suffer losses to maintain operations.
According to reflections from the Vietnam Pepper Association (VPA), the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), compared to the same period last year, freight rates for two key routes are the US and Europe. EU) has increased by 5-10 times. Not only suffered losses due to a sharp increase in freight rates, enterprises also faced a shortage of empty containers for packing, leading to continuous delays, affecting delivery progress, especially orders that had to be delivered on schedule to be shipped. enjoy preferential tariffs within quotas.
According to statistics from the Vietnam Maritime Administration – Ministry of Transport, the volume of containers passing through Vietnamese ports in 2020 increased by 10.6% compared to 2019. In the first 5 months of 2021, the volume of containers passing through Vietnamese ports South also increased by 23% over the same period in 2020. Thus, empty containers are not lacking as the reason given by shipping lines, but just an excuse for shipping lines to increase freight rates with enterprises.
In the face of the situation that it is easier to book a shipment through an agent at a high price than to book a seat directly through a shipping line at the listed price, businesses question whether the shipping agent’s agents “snag” empty containers and seats on the ship. to resell at high prices to businesses. This doubt is also based on the fact that oil price (the biggest cost in the operating cost structure of shipping lines) is much lower than in the past period, the shipping lines pushing up freight rates extremely high. physical.
According to VPA’s reflection, another shortcoming is that the shipping charges of competitors such as India to the US and EU have not increased as high as from Vietnam. Recently, US and EU customers have turned to buy pepper from Brazil because the quality is not too different from Vietnam, most importantly, the shipping cost from Brazil to the US is only 1/3 of that from Vietnam. and from Brazil to the EU is only 1/10 of that from Vietnam.
“This makes Vietnam’s pepper industry lose its competitiveness in the US and EU markets. Continuing like this, where will Vietnamese agricultural products go? The risk of losing key markets to competitors is very urgent” – VPA worries.
From the above absurdities, the business community has written recommendations to the management agencies to intervene so that shipping lines do not abuse the situation of pushing shipping prices, causing more difficulties for businesses. In the immediate future, experts say that industry associations need to link up to be able to negotiate with shipping lines, instead of reacting individually.
Enterprises need to calculate to have long-term export contracts to replace small contracts to get a good price policy from shipping lines or switch to FOB export (delivery at Vietnamese ports) so that the buyer, usually big importers, worry about shipping.
According to the Workers
