The statement was made by enterprises at a trade exchange programme with the World Freight Organisation (WFO), held by the Trade Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) in Ho Chi Minh City, on May 7.
According to WFO President Leandro Harari, as an economy with a relatively high growth rate and a continuously increasing import-export demand in recent years, Vietnam has a lot of advantages for developing its freight sector. However, its freight costs still remain high compared to other countries, which partly stems from an unfavourable business climate, as well as costs in terms of import-export tariffs, and other costs related to customs clearance.
The international freight firms stated that Vietnam has a huge demand for using freight services, thus offering large development room for both Vietnamese and foreign companies in the field. They mentioned the complicated, costly and time-consuming procedures concerning the granting of visa as a large difficulty for them in seeking partners in Vietnam. In addition, the infrastructure in service of the transportation industry in Vietnam still remains poor and has yet to match the sector’s development demand or the customers’ requirements.
Delegates at the event also pointed out certain limitations of Vietnamese freight enterprises, including their small scale, lack of professionalism, inefficiency in branding and building prestige towards foreign partners, and language restrictions.
In order to enhance the competitiveness of Vietnamese freight companies, the experts suggested that the State take measures to further improve the business climate of the transportation industry, simplify its administrative procedures, reduce costs via tariffs and cost policies, and invest in infrastructure development.
Vietnamese freight firms should enhance their professionalism and seek ways to affirm their prestige to partners, they said, stressing the need to strengthen links between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to step by step establish a full-package service supply chain in order to make better use of the cooperation opportunities and develop regional and international markets.
