Nguyen Hoai Nam, Deputy General Secretary of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), said the move would allow firms to directly export their goods.

Most of the Mekong Delta’s export turnover is made up of rice and processed seafood products. Every year, the region’s transportation demand for export goods is about 17-18 million tonnes. However, 70 percent of export products have to be transferred to major ports in HCM City and Cai Mep port (Ba Ria – Vung Tau province), increasing transportation by 10-40 percent depending on the route.

This situation leads to frequent overloads on the connecting routes from HCM City to Mekong Delta provinces. In addition, transport service quality is poor, costs are high and there is a lack of links between different modes of transport.

As one of the largest frozen shrimp exporters in the world, Minh Phu Seafood Joint Stock Company annually exports about 6,700-7,000 shrimp containers with a turnover of 750 – 850 million USD.

Chu Van An, Deputy General Director of Minh Phu Seafood, said if there was a more suitable logistics service, goods could be exported directly from the Mekong Delta and businesses could save 30-40 percent of their costs, which would increase the competitiveness of agricultural products.

Focused investment in regional transport infrastructure would help tackle the problem, with waterways investment the best option due to the area’s terrain.

A representative of Ca Mau province’s Transport Department urged prioritising investment in inland waterways that are connected with road traffic to enhance transport capacity throughout the region, and to exploit the waterway system linking HCM City with other provinces and cities in the region.

The Ministry of Transport said that it will study and implement a dredging project and renovate Khai Doc Phu Hien canal connecting the Tien and Hau rivers to shorten the transport distance between Can Tho port and the seaport in the southeast.

The ministry also plans to upgrade inland waterway routes such as HCM City to Kien Luong and HCM City to Ca Mau. It will also focus on improving the transportation infrastructure system, reducing congestion on main waterways and cutting the cost of transporting goods from manufacturers to consumers, Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The said.

According to Nam, there is a lack of seaports in the delta, especially deep-water ports capable of handling export container ships.

Meanwhile, goods being stuck at ports and overloads at some key ports in the southeast region occur regularly, allowing shipping enterprises to increase service charges and wasting businesses’ warehouse costs and time.

An Giang province is a big exporter and processor of seafood, but difficulties in transport infrastructure have affected the development of enterprises.

As a unit specialising in raising and processing tra fish and basa fish for export, Nguyen Anh Thu, Deputy General Director of An My Fish Joint Stock Company, said the province’s transport system lacks synchronisation. This has caused  difficulties and increased costs for businesses as goods cannot be transported by container trucks but must be carried by small trucks.

It is forecast that the transportation demand for the region’s rice by 2020 will be about 10.2 million tonnes and aquaculture output will be about 2.42 million tonnes.

This shows the logistics market of the Mekong Delta has potential to develop and attract investors, according to Nguyen Minh Toai, Director of Can Tho city’s Department of Industry and Trade.

He said developing logistics services and building a regional level logistics centre was an urgent need.

To meet demand for import and export of regional goods, the Ministry of Transport asks the Prime Minister for approval to adjust planning for Soc Trang and Tran De seaports to seek investment and form a gateway seaport to receive vessels of up to 100,000 tonnes.

Besides, the ministry proposed the Government and the National Assembly approve the allocation of capital to upgrade the second phase of Cho Gao canal and complete investment procedures for the southern region waterways and transport logistics corridor project with loans from the World Bank.

The General Department of Vietnam Customs noted that during the first half of August, the country’s cashew nut exports reached 21,500 tons, worth a total of US$146.2 million, representing a 10.1 per cent increase in volume and a rise of 9.3 per cent in value in comparison with the same period last month.

Since the beginning the year, cashew nut exports hit 261,200 tons, worth US$1.936 billion, a surge of 17.6 per cent in volume and a drop of 8.2 per cent in value compared to the same period last year.

The average export price of cashew nuts during the first half of August fell by 0.8 per cent to US$6,812 per ton in comparison with the same period last month. The average export price has fallen 21.9 per cent to US$7,415 per ton since the beginning of the year.

During the remaining months of 2019, the demand for cashew nuts in the global market is expected to rise with the cashew sector targeting the export of 450,000 tons of cashew during the year, according to Vinacas.

Experts have concluded that due to low export prices, the global demand for cashew nuts is forecast to increase in the short term, higher than the set target of 10 per cent.

Vinacas President Nguyen Van Cong believes that the price of cashew nuts is likely to rebound later this year with the world’s consumption demand for the food item projected to rise during the year’s fourth quarter.

Vinacas said the cashew industry is likely to face a number of challenges of processing and trading cashew nuts in the future due to stricter requirements being implemented by importing countries.

Most notably, demanding markets such as the United States and EU have announced that they are to apply additional food safety standards and inspect chemical residues on exports to their market.

The association also warned local cashew businesses about the need to further step up production and processing activities in a bid to supply their products to supermarkets in order to stabilize market prices.

With the escalating trade tensions, the global financial and monetary market is moving into a period of increasing risks during the remainder of the year. If the US-China trade frictions remain unresolved, fluctuations could continue to shake the financial market.

China has depreciated its currency to 7.04 yuan to 1 USD in an attempt to curb the negative impacts caused by the US tariffs levied on Chinese exports to the US.

A currency war could break out if economies continue to devalue their currency and lower interest rates. This would drag them into stagnation and then leading to a global crisis.

If yuan depreciation is kept on, it will put additional pressures on the Vietnamese dong (VND), making Chinese exports to Vietnam becoming cheaper, and worsening the latter’s trade deficit with the neighboring country.

Nguyen Tri Hieu, a financial expert, assumes that the devaluation of VND should stand at a rate of 3 per cent. Indeed, the level of VND devaluation remains moderate, meaning that there is plenty of room to depreciate VND in order to negate adverse impacts sourced by yuan depreciation.

However, the depreciation of VND could harm the local securities market as it could raise concerns among investors.

Since the beginning of the year, the financial market has absorbed a large amount of foreign capital inflows. If VND is devalued deeply, this will have a widespread influence on investment activities.

“There has been no phenomenon of moving cash flows from the securities or banking sectors to the gold market. But high gold prices may result in speculations and an investment shift”, Hieu noted.

Vietnam is regarded as a beneficiary from the US-China trade war. Indeed, many investors have planned to move their production facilities from China to Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam. Tight control should be applied to stop the possibility that the production facilities ship Chinese goods to the Vietnamese market and have them relabeled as made-in-Vietnam products before being exported to the US.

Hieu suggested that amid soaring FDI inflows into the Vietnamese market, the Government should become more selective when choosing such investments in accordance with the overall economic development strategy.

HÀ NỘI — Fourteen months before electronic invoicing will be made mandatory in Việt Nam, which is set for November 1, 2020, there is still much work for the Government to do. Among the most crucial tasks to be completed is providing businesses with guidelines on how to issue and use e-invoices and across-the-board implementation among key State agencies such as the Tax Department, the State Treasury, the Vietnam Directorate of Market Surveillance and insurers.

The absence of guidelines and lack of co-operation among State agencies have proven to be a major hurdle for business to completely switch to e-invoices. For example, while the tax authorities encourage business to switch to using e-invoices they may not be accepted at the State Treasury or by insurers, said BKAV head of corporate client department Nguyễn Khơ Din. The company is a leading Vietnamese firm in the field of cyber-security, software and e-solutions for governments.

“Without guidelines, businesses currently have many questions over how to issue e-invoices, including small details such as what date to issue them, whose signature to include or whether it is necessary to include a signature,” Din said.
He said Government agencies must quickly lay down a roadmap with all the tasks for businesses to complete from now until 2020 to ensure a smooth implementation of e-invoices on a national scale.

It’s also more complicated to correct mistakes made in e-invoices compared to traditional paper invoices.
“Businesses used to just issue another invoice to replace one with mistakes. With e-invoices they will have to issue separate adjustments for each mistake made in the original,” said Nguyễn Hoài Hương from the Defence Economic Technical Industry Corporation.
This, in turn, would create further problems for their customers when they need to file those in other transactions, she added.
Mạc Quoc Anh, deputy director of the Hà Nội SME Association stressed the need to create a different policy for SMEs and traditional family businesses. He said such economic enterprises often faced severe financial and infrastructure limitations, which might make it very difficult for them to adopt e-invoices.

While experts had pointed out that e-invoices would help businesses significantly cut costs and speed up transactions, Anh said many SMEs would still need convincing to make the switch to using e-invoices. He urged for more effort to be put in raising awareness about e-invoices and their economic benefits among small business owners.

VNS