HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Vietnamese logistics firms are embracingtechnology to optimise their costs and improve their competitiveness, accordingto experts.

According to the Vietnam Logistics Business Association (VLA), the fourthindustrial revolution and breakthroughs in technology have brought about manychanges in the logistics industry.

Keeping up with technological trends to keep pace with the global industry isessential.

But experts said the number of companies using advanced technologies wasmodest.

They said the industry needed to invest more in technology to improve itsservice quality.

Speaking at a recent seminar on Smart Logistics held on the sidelines of thefirst Vietnam International Port, Infrastructure and Logistics Exhibition &Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Dr Ngo Van Nhon, chairman of the VietnamQuality Association of HCM City, said Vietnamese logistics firms only providedsome preliminary services in the logistics services chain.

These were single services and not highly integrated, with only a few largeplayers offering a closed service chain.

The inconsistency in the infrastructure had limited the development of thelogistics industry, he said.

According to Nguyen Duy Anh, deputy head of academic affairs at the HCM CityUniversity of Technology, Vietnamese logistic enterprises mainly cater to smallsupply chains such as delivery, storage for rent, and customs declaration.

International operations are mostly handled by foreign companies.

Nguyen Manh Cuong, deputy director of the Agency for Southern Affairs at theMinistry of Science and Technology, said Vietnam ranked 39th out of 160 in theWorld Bank’s 2018 Logistics Performance Index, a big jump from two yearsearlier when it was 64th, and third in Southeast Asia after Singapore (7th) andThailand (32nd).

The country targets a rank of 30th-35th by 2025, according to Cuong. The sectortargets annual growth rate of 15-20 percent and a share of 8-10 percent in thecountry’s GDP by then.

According to the VLA, the sector, which contributes around 5 percent of GDPnow, has more than 4,000 local and foreign companies.

The latter account for just 1 percent in terms of numbers but have a 12.7 percentmarket share.

To realise the targets, delegates urged logistics companies to focus onimproving their technology and logistics platform and increase digitisation andhuman resource training to meet the sector’s development demand in the comingtime.-VNS/VNA