lan, container , etc. ) by door-to-door package contracts and performing other services related to goods such as collecting, dividing retail goods, preserving, recycling, packaging, repairing packaging, classifying goods, carrying out import-export procedures, carrying out customs procedures, purchasing cargo insurance and delivering goods to carriers for further transportation to the designated place.
Provide consulting services on other related issues at the request of domestic and foreign organizations and individuals.
Accept import-export authorization or directly import-export business of goods based on import-export license issued to the enterprise by the Ministry of Trade
Carry out delivery and transportation services for import and export goods in transit through Vietnam and vice versa by car and other means of transport.
Conduct transportation business in accordance with current State regulations.
Act as an agent for foreign shipping lines and an agent serving foreign ships entering Vietnamese ports.
Joint ventures and associations with domestic and foreign economic organizations in the fields of freight forwarding, transportation, warehousing and yard rental.
2.2. The composition of Vietnamese SMEs is very diverse.
There are currently about 1000 enterprises and companies in Vietnam operating in the field of freight forwarding. In terms of economic structure, 20% belong to state-owned enterprises, 70% belong to joint stock and limited liability companies. The remaining 10% belong to the private economic sector. Recently, there have been 100% foreign-owned enterprises investing in Vietnam, in which Maersk A/S (Denmark) is the first foreign-owned company in the field of freight forwarding that was licensed by our state to be established in
April 2, 2005. Regarding the structure of the ministries, there are enterprises of the Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Public Security, and General Department of Tourism participating. Regarding the means of delivery, there are railway, road, river, sea and air enterprises.
2.3. The capital scale of enterprises is still small, the level of industrial equipment is still backward.
This is still a long-term difficulty that we can overcome. The capital for large freight forwarding enterprises such as Vietnam National Shipping Lines - Vinalines is only 1.4 billion VND (equal to 10-12% of the capital of freight forwarding enterprises in the region and the world). Currently, private companies account for about 10% of the total number of freight forwarding enterprises and most of their capital is only a few hundred million VND (some units have capital of only about 300 to 500 million VND), operating in a scattered and fragmented manner. State-owned enterprises are currently being equitized, but the trend of equitization of these enterprises goes against the law of " capital accumulation " and the law of enterprise development.
The equipment is still inadequate. Most of the machines are old and have been used for too long. 100% of the tools and equipment for unloading goods at seaports and airports do not meet the demand. In fact, of the more than 266 seaports located along the 3,200 km coastline of our country, none of them is capable of receiving medium-sized ships of the world with a tonnage of over 50,000 tons or container ships of 2,000 TEUs. Although the State has paid attention to investment in recent years, there has not been any significant change. The figures in the table below will be a clear demonstration of this underdevelopment:
Table 3: Some of the largest container ports in the world and Vietnam (2006)
TT
Port | Nation | Number of TEUs loaded and unloaded (Unit: 1000) | |
1 | Singapore | Singapore | 23,200 |
2 | Hong Kong | China | 22,430 |
3 | Shanghai | China | 18,090 |
4 | Shenzhen | China | 16,200 |
5 | Busan | Korea | 11,840 |
6 | Kaohsiung | Taiwan | 9,471 |
7 | Rotterdam | Netherlands | 9,300 |
8 | Hamburg | Virtue | 8,086 |
9 | Cai Lan | Vietnam | 3 |
10 | Saigon | Vietnam | 2.5 |
11 | Hai Phong | Vietnam | 1.5 |
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Looking at the above table, it can be seen that the operational capacity of Vietnamese seaports is still very low compared to other ports in the region and the world. For example, Cai Lan port, the port with the largest container handling capacity in Vietnam as of the reporting date, is equal to 1/3 of the handling capacity of Rotterdam port - Netherlands, and only 1/8 of the handling capacity of Singapore national port.
With airports, the situation is much worse. With river, rail and road transport, although the situation is likely to improve,
more objective but still quite far behind other countries in the region and in the world.
2.4. The qualifications of the industry's staff are still inadequate.
The rapid development of the logistics industry is also a concern for Vietnamese enterprises today, when the scale of human resources is still very small. Only a few dozen state-owned and joint-stock enterprises have a relatively large number of employees (from 200 - 300 employees), the remaining enterprises have an average of 10 - 20 employees. [17]. Although these few employees have graduated from university, most of them are not specialized and have to improve their professional qualifications and skills during the working process.
Regarding professional qualifications and management experience, although the number of employees is large, because of lack of training, labor productivity is low (calculated for 3 large companies such as Vietrans, Vietfract, Vinalines, the monthly income for an employee is approximately 2 million VND, only equal to 5-7% of the income of freight forwarding businesses in developed countries.
II/ ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT STATUS OF LOGISTICS ACTIVITIES IN VIETNAMESE TRADING ENTERPRISES IN RECENT YEARS.
Logistics has been born and achieved brilliant achievements in most developed countries in the world. However, in Vietnam, logistics activities have only been really applied in the last ten years, especially in freight forwarding enterprises. The number of enterprises participating in this market is constantly increasing, according to statistics of the Department of Planning and Investment of Ho Chi Minh City, on average, every week there is a logistics enterprise licensed to operate or add logistics functions . [13] .
Since the Foreign Investment Law and a number of other laws such as the Commercial Law, Enterprise Law, Bankruptcy Law, Civil Law , etc. were promulgated in Vietnam, logistics activities have become an essential need for import and export goods of all units, organizations or individuals. Especially
are services that import and export goods require to be provided in the field of freight forwarding.
Today's transportation and delivery activities do not stop at simple operations as before, but require providing a chain of services that are organized and closely linked together throughout the entire process of goods circulation; and require logistics service businesses to know how to integrate a series of activities and constantly improve the chain of services that the business provides.
1/ Current status of logistics application in Vietnamese enterprises
According to incomplete statistics, in Vietnam there are currently about 1000 freight forwarding enterprises providing logistics services. However, according to economic experts, the current situation of Vietnam's logistics industry is almost completely weak, enterprises providing this type of service can only meet 1/4 of domestic demand. The main reason is that logistics activities are still very new to Vietnam and in the freight forwarding business, the implementation of logistics is only in the testing phase, at a rudimentary level, meaning that the delivery activities are simple rather than implementing the entire logistics chain.
Currently in our country, there are many businesses registered to do business and named logistics services, but there are not many real logistics service businesses. Vietnam National Shipping Lines currently has 98 member units including three branches in Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong, Can Tho and branches of member units, divided into 3 blocks: maritime transport block, seaport transport block and maritime service block, most of which have initially tested the application or are implementing the provision of logistics services and they are the businesses with the most development potential among Vietnamese businesses participating in the logistics market. The maritime transport block has VOSCO, VINASHIP, NOSCO, VITRANSCHART, FALCON, the port block
Hai Phong port, Saigon port ... A fairly common trend of the
Vietnamese freight forwarding enterprises are currently joint ventures with foreign companies to exploit and develop services, including logistics services. Some joint ventures operate quite effectively in the logistics service sector, such as Logitem Company (a joint venture between Vietnam's 14th fleet and Japan's Logitem International Company), established in September 1994, specializing in logistics services; Dragon Logistics (a joint venture between Japanese partners) and Vinafco); Logistics Development Company No. 1 (a joint venture of four partners: Neptune Oriental Line - Singapore, Mitsui Trading Company - Japan, Southern Waterways Corporation - Sowatco, Chartering Transport Corporation - Vietfracht) is exploiting VICT Port, the first logistics port in Vietnam, ranked as the most modern in Southeast Asia with an information system considered the most modern in Vietnam; Ahlers - Vina, a joint venture between Ahlers and Inlaco Saigon; Phili - Orient Lines; GEMARTRANS French-Vietnamese shipping joint venture company …
However, Vietnamese freight forwarding enterprises have only participated in the logistics chain, performing some stages in the process of goods circulation, but have not become integrators and organizers of those activities. Even large freight forwarding companies in Vietnam such as Vietrans, Viconship, Falcon ... only provide services in the form of consolidation of small shipments for export goods, organizing domestic transportation, and delivering goods to individual shippers for import goods.
The common service segments in the service chain that Vietnamese freight forwarding enterprises often undertake are freight forwarding, warehouse leasing and domestic transportation. Multimodal transport services are the core services of a logistics service provider, but are only implemented in a very limited way at some Vietnamese freight forwarding enterprises such as Vietfracht and Vietrans, while most of them participate as agents for foreign companies. The main operations that these enterprises
This business performs the following tasks: handling procedures for receiving and delivering goods at seaports and airports, transporting from port stations to inland areas and delivering them to the shipper at the point of receipt for imported goods or using bills of lading, multimodal transport documents with foreign companies for which the company acts as an agent to collect goods and transport them to port stations for export. Vietnamese freight forwarding enterprises only participate in multimodal transport contracts as forwarding agents or perform domestic transport or transit for neighboring countries, while the person who directly signs these contracts with foreign shippers is a foreign transport company or shipping company, they are the real MTO. For exported goods, Vietnamese companies mainly provide services of counting, collecting goods, fumigating, packaging goods, marking, delivering goods to ports, carrying out customs procedures , etc. For imported goods, logistics services are mainly performed with machinery, equipment, and raw materials for industrial production. The logistics service system in Vietnam is quite monotonous compared to the modern logistics service chain in the world, most of the services considered to have high added value belong entirely to foreign logistics companies. In Vietnam's logistics services, in terms of supply chain management services, combined sea-air, air-sea aviation services, hanging container services for high-end garments ... only large foreign logistics companies in Vietnam are capable of providing.
The current form of Vietnamese freight forwarding enterprises applying and implementing logistics services is mainly to act as agents for international freight forwarding and logistics companies or to subcontract a link in the logistics service chain that the parent company has acquired. For example, Vinatrans acts as an agent for Panalpia, Geologistics, Kuehne + Nagel; Safi acts as an agent for MSAS; Vietfracht acts as an agent for Maersk Logistics; Transimex acts as an agent for Nippon Express, etc.
In the Vietnamese logistics market, domestic freight forwarding companies only account for a very small market share. According to statistics, logistics services for nearly 90% of the volume of imported and exported goods of all types and nearly 100% of the volume of construction goods are provided by foreign container shipping lines. Foreign enterprises also almost monopolize all logistics services for processed export goods. The reason for this situation is that in international trade relations, most Vietnamese exporters deliver goods under FOB and FCA terms. The right to decide on transportation is assigned by the buyer and of course the buyer will assign a company in their country to carry out transportation and at the same time undertake other related stages of logistics activities. It is difficult for Vietnamese companies to enter these activities because most Vietnamese exporters process or export for large customers, these customers often sign long-term and global contracts with reputable international logistics companies.
A typical example is the shoe company Like, which has many business contracts with Vietnam but does not hire Vietnamese companies to provide logistics services. It is difficult for Vietnamese footwear companies to sign processing contracts with them, let alone negotiate transportation and logistics. Currently, Like is hiring logistics services from Maersk Logistics and APL Logistics.
Regarding imported goods, looking at the trade balance, we see that Vietnam has a trade deficit and this is a good market for Vietnamese logistics service companies. Moreover, if in the past Vietnamese importers mainly purchased goods under CIF, CIP conditions, they are now gradually shifting to FOB. They are becoming potential customers and opening up good business opportunities for Vietnamese logistics companies now and in the future. However, this market still does not completely belong to Vietnamese companies. A large part of this market is located in