Agro-exports held up at border
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A huge number of trucks transporting Tet agro-exports from Vietnam to China now get into a bottleneck at the Tan Thanh border checkpoint in the northern border province of Lang Son due to poor infrastructure and limited storage space.
On-site storage facility can only accommodate 160 vehicles per day at the most while up to 200 trucks are waiting daily for customs clearance so a holdup is inevitable, according to Nguyen Van Hoi, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Department of Border Trade.
Hoi cited overloaded infrastructure and a surge in the quantity of trucks rushing to the border locality as two of the reasons for the logjam right ahead of Tet which falls early next month.
The number of vehicles carrying exports to Tan Thanh for customs clearance jumped from 36,000 in 2009 to 42,000 last year, not to mention 51,000 trucks transporting imported cargos, he elaborated.
Another reason is the delay caused by China’s extra packaging requirements on top of international benchmarks, he added.
Many of the cargos from Vietnam are not wrapped in advance and the owners only do the packaging as required by Chinese partners at the border, thus worsening the blockage.
The official told Tuoi Tre local authorities have had plans to broaden roads leading up to Tan Thanh and triple its current storage facilities in a bid to fix the situation.
The department, in the long run, will establish a coherent logistics and goods transportation system in the northern region to better control the flow of exports and imports, he revealed.
It also encourages businesses to set up their own storage facilities along the northern border area to help prevent long delays in the future, he added.
The government will provide administrative and economic help if they set up their distribution network and other support facilities in border areas to lessen the pressure on customs clearance, according to him.
