Reduce logistics cost to improve the competitiveness.

The logistics costs, currently, in the textile enterprises is accounting for a large proportion.

In the context of deep economic integration, the exports of textile still have many opportunities to break through. However, Mr. Truong Van Cam, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association, said that one of the factors that affect the competitiveness of the textile industry is the logistics cost. Currently, logistics costs for textile and garment enterprises are quite large. The overall cost of logistics in Vietnam is higher than other countries in the region and in the world, which is three times higher than Singapore, about 6% higher than Thailand and 7% higher than China...

According to Mr. Cam, there are many reasons leading to high logistics costs such as: regulations on fees and charges are high, not reasonable; the logistics business of the logistics companies in Vietnam is not as expected, the logistics market share of logistics companies in Vietnam is low, which is being affected by the competition of foreign logistics enterprises.

In fact, not only the textile industry but logistics costs directly affect the competitiveness of many other export items. Mr. Le Duy Hiep, Chairman of Vietnam Logistics Association, said: “High transportation costs are one of the key factors that affect logistics costs in the country. At present, this cost accounts for 30-40% of product cost, while the percentage is only about 15% in other countries. This is a factor reduces significantly the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises, including textile enterprises.

In order to reduce logistics costs and increase the competitiveness for the exports of the textile industry in particular, many other sectors in general, Mr. Hiep proposed the action of the state, in which focusing on reducing the cost components under the State policies such as: fuel prices, tolls.... In addition, there should be transparency in customs clearance and transportation so that unofficial fees are no longer a burden on logistics costs.

“At the macro level, transportation infrastructure needs to be further improved to eliminate bottlenecks to road transport as well as to invest in upgrading and expanding technical infrastructure to serve railways that can increase the connection among railways and other modes of transport in the multimodal transport chain. For example, in Hanoi, there are only a few inland ports such as Khuyen Luong and Pha Den ports. At these ports are only being deployed by construction material companies coal mining companies but they not attracting enterprises which need to transport by waterway from Hai Phong to Hanoi. This situation is similar for the key economic areas. Therefore, it is necessary to have researched on the potential and benefits of inland waterway transport and to publish and share information, so that enterprises can have more information on making a decision. That the information on supply capacity will help to orient of the transport needs to lower cost channels for enterprises,” said Mr.Hiep.

Some experts said that in the textile and garment sector in particular or most other exports in general, in order to contribute to reducing logistics costs, on the basis of which to reduce costs for enterprises, the export enterprises themselves and units supplying Logistics services must coordinate closely. For example, nowadays, the reality is, though the goods is in the container, import and export enterprises still use the traditional trade conditions such as FOB (80.49%) and CIF (78.05%). In this case, the logistics companies should pay attention to support and consult the import-export enterprises to use suitable commercial conditions for container goods such as FCA, DDP, CIP, DAP, DAT to reduce liability as well as expenses, as well as unnecessary fees.