Transport enterprises strive to recover

​In the first months of the year, the transportation economy of the country as well as of Dong Nai continued to recover with all indicators growing. However, facing lots of pressure, transport enterprises are still not optimistic when the economic situation continues to face many difficulties.

The recovery of the transport industry, especially freight transport depends on the recovery and growth of production and business. (Illustration)

​Production and export slow down, leading to a narrowing of transportation demand along with high costs making transport enterprises feel fragile.

Continue to recover

According to the Ministry of Transport, after a period of paralysis due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country's transport activities have been recovering in the first months of 2023. This reflected in the positive signs from the end of 2022.

In general, in all fields of road, waterway, aviation, railway, and seaway, there have also been a recovery and recognized by the international community, especially in the aviation sector, Vietnam ranked first out of 25 countries with the fastest-growing domestic aviation market in the world.

Transport growth is a good sign, but according to many experts, the traction of the domestic market is limited while Vietnam's goods export are slowing down, which will make the market overview stand in front of fragile expectations. The decline in demand for goods due to concerns about the economic crisis and high inflation made the import demand of retailers decrease. This leads to a further decline in international freight rates in early 2023. Those fluctuations require businesses to actively find ways to adapt, especially restructuring the transportation sector and operating routes and applying technology in management to suit market fluctuations.

Still facing many difficulties

As a North-South container shipping enterprise, currently Nguyen Vu Hoang Co., Ltd (Bien Hoa City) has also had to recalculate its production and business activities. According to Ms. Vu Thi Van Anh, director of the company, for more than 2 years now, the container shipping industry has been affected by the global economic downturn, profits, customers, markets, and jobs of workers have all been affected. The enterprise specializing in long-distance transporting, but the more we transport, the more loss so we have to change, making efforts to connect and find customers in shorter distances, but it is still very difficult.

Similarly, according to Mr. Ha Ngoc Dung, representative of Viet Duc Customs Clearance Joint Stock Company, an enterprise specializing in providing freight and logistics services in Dong Nai and surrounding areas, the business is facing difficulties because fuel prices and other incurred costs.

According to Mr. Dung, the company's work is still much, but the profit is small, even at negative level, because each vehicle used to cost less than half of the fuel cost in the past. Meanwhile, compared to before, the freight charge collected by customers has not changed much.

In addition to the lack of revolving capital and difficulties in terms of markets and partners, one of the problems that businesses are pressing today is the bottleneck in vehicle registration. Registration congestion is still common, causing difficulties for transport enterprises. In particular, recently, the situation of appointment registration causing difficulties for businesses has not been removed. Many businesses proactively come to register for a re-registration schedule before the expiration of the inspection book 15-30 days but scheduled for nearly a month later. "The long waiting time for registration affects the operation of business and drivers, causing frustration for many people, hoping for a solution to remove it as soon as possible," said the owner of a business in Trang Bom.​​