The Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has just urged the Ministry of Planning and Investment to propose a number of policies and solutions to promote Viet Nam’s economic growth in the current difficult triggered situation.

In detail, VCCI proposed proper measures to tackle the current container shortages and stabilise logistics fees which have gone up recently. In fact, logistics costs are sharply climbing from 2020, accompanied with an increasingly severe shortage of containers.

For example, transportation fees from Viet Nam to Southampton, the UK, increased from US$1,600 in early 2020 to $5,000 in December and now $9,100per container. The transportation fees to Los Angeles, the US, rose from 1,800 USD in early 2020 to around 8,000 USD currently, the Viet Nam News Agency said. 

Empty container scarcity has also caused delays in shipments which caused rising costs for container storage at ports and still worse, cancellations of orders. The situation worsened after the Suez Canal blockage in March as well as congestion at ports. At the same time, it has also caused many businesses to pay more storage and yard costs because shipments were congested at seaports.

These aforementioned problems, in reality, have resulted in disruptions in the supply chains of many commodities and driven many businesses into troubles, and adversely affected their competitiveness in the international market.

A number of other solutions have, therefore, been proposed to support businesses to recover their production and business and overcome the negative impacts of COVID-19 such as training high-quality human resources, focusing on developing the digital economy, including e-commerce and logistics, accelerating the disbursement of public investment capital by promoting approved national key projects; promoting the domestic market.

It was necessary that the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Industry and Trade establish a working group to remove difficulties for enterprises and tackle the container shortage, in tandem with working closely with industry associations, ports and shipping lines to raise solutions to prevent manipulation which was pushing up transportation fees.

Reporting by NAM PHUONG – Translating by A.T