Hanoi (VNA) - Cargo shipping has seenpositive growth in the first six months of the year, with 254.8 million tonneshandled via the country’s seaports, up 17 percent on last year.

The Vietnam Maritime Administration (under theMinistry of Transport) reported that 8.7 million TEUs (20-foot equivalentunits) of freight containers were processed, up 28 percent against the sameperiod last year, and fulfilling 57 percent of the target set for 2018.

During the period, Vietnamese container shipscarried about 69.9 million tonnes of cargo, representing a year-on-year rise of9 percent, according to the administration.

According to Nguyen Dinh Viet, deputy directorof the Vietnam Maritime Administration, despite the positive growth in thefirst half of the year, there remains inherent weaknesses that need to beaddressed.

“The Vietnamese sea fleet still doesn’t have anycontainer ships capable of long-distance journeys, such as to the UnitedStates, Europe and Africa. These journeys are usually undertaken by foreignfleets,” Viet told the Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam (Vietnam EconomicTimes).

The Vietnamese fleet currently commands about 10percent of the market share and mostly handles short-distance transport such asChina, Japan, the Republic of Korea, or within the Southeast Asian region.

To push the development of maritime transport in asustainable direction, there needs to be a strong logistics system.

Currently, there are nearly 297,000 firms in thecountry registered to operate in the logistics sectors, with 0.43 percent ofthem, or around 1,300, are providers of maritime logistics services.

“There are a decent number of domestic logisticsfirms in Vietnam but their market share is fairly small, with most of them onlyproviding a certain service-related part in the logistics chain, or acting asagents for foreign maritime shipping companies,” Viet said.

Most ports are small-scale, operatinginefficiently, and lacking modern loading and unloading infrastructure.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Van Cong saidthat many import-export firms are still not fully aware of the importance oflogistics. They usually only understand logistics as purely transport, withoutknowing that it contains many different activities.

“In the last five or six years, the transportministry has implemented its logistics development project, aimed at promotingmultimodal transport, in which sea routes and inland waterways will be fullyutilised,” Cong said.

However, connectivity between modes of transporthas not seen considerable improvement. In rail freight transport, even with thekey route of the North-South railway, there is a lack of appropriate warehousesor equipment to provide services such as storage, loading and unloading,delivery, or short-distance transportation – especially tailored for cargocontainers.

“This shortage must be corrected before we couldhope for future logistics development,” the deputy minister stressed.

In the last half of the year, the transportministry has asked the customs department to facilitate legal documentrevisions, especially in terms of pricing schemes to prevent arbitrary pricehikes by foreign companies.

In the future, efforts and resources would also bespent on dredging operations to ensure uninterrupted traffic in seaports.

Vietnam has a total of 42 public navigation linesstretching 935.9km and 10 specialised navigation lines, with major maritimeshipping routes including Hon Gai – Cai Lan, Hai Phong in the north and Da Nangor Vung Tau – Thi Vai in the south.-VNA