Technical Report No. 8 PORT AND SHIPPING

* Proposed Strategies *
I-5-2
Vietnam National Transport Strategy Study (VITRANSS)
Technical Report No. 8
Shipping and Ports
fully accede to the MOU’s requirements. To promote maritime safety as a state
administration function, it is an urgent task of VINAMARINE to increase the number
of technical specialists competent on marine safety inspection.
• Reform and strengthen VINAMARINE’s administrative authority over the
maritime industry.
• Comply with the industry’s requirement and submit appropriate proposals
to the government and MOT in order to enforce urgent measures for the
promotion of shipping and upgrading of human resources.
• Increase the number of inspectors and improve the training programs for
Port State Control inspectors.
• Transfer port management from VINAMARINE to other appropriate and
capable agency to allow VINAMARINE to concentrate on other equally
important administrative functions.
5.2 Competitive and Liberalized Shipping Environment
Overseas Shipping
Government Circular No. 19/TB of 24 February 1996 indicated government’s
transport share targets of 40%, 30% and 20% of containerized exported goods,
crude oil and dry goods, respectively, to be handled by its flag vessels. However,
since government has not extended any kind of support to the maritime industry,
these targets were not achieved. In fact, the share of national vessels in the
transport of exported and imported cargoes was only 20% of yearly cargo
movement to the discontent of all sectors of the industry, including shippers.
Besides government’s lack of support, the past years’ poor performance has
been caused mainly by poor service quality, limited capacity and the shipping
operators’ disadvantaged positions as compared to foreign shipping operators on
trade contracts.
The present capacity for the carriage of foreign trade cargoes by Vietnamese
flags is limited both in quality and space. VINAMARINE reported that the number
of cargo vessels over 200 DWT as of February 1998 is 477, 57 of which are over
5,000 DWT and are mainly serving foreign trade. Then too, the average age of
its present fleet of ocean-going vessels is high at 21 years. Thus, expansion and
modernization of vessels is an important and urgent issue to comply not only with
the national requirement but also with the expected increase in demand due to
industrialization. However, the industry is also faced with existing constraints
such as limited finance, which is most important in the acquisition of modern
vessels, and domestic capability in shipbuilding.
A key factor to consider when establishing the required fleet expansion is the