Review of infrastructure and technical equipment and supplies of the Vietnam’s seaport system

 Vietnam boasts a coastline of over 3,200 kilometers, thousands of small and large islands, and numerous locations for building seaports along the coast. Also, the country is very close to the international seaway, which has now the highest density of vessel traffic in the world, as well as being a gateway to the sea for the landlocked neighboring countries, such as Laos and the hinterlands, including northwestern Thailand and south- eastern China.

In implementation of the open door economic policy, the Party and the Government of Vietnam have attached importance to the development of the country’s transportation system, particularly ocean shipping. Special policies have been introduced in a bid to expand the country’s ship fleet and seaport system, from technical infrastructure to auxiliary services. As a result, Vietnam’s seaport system has undergone radical changes partly in response to increasing imports and exports as well as the national economic growth.

 At present, Vietnam has in excess of 100 ports and harbors with a combined length of roughly 22,000 meters of quays, above 1 million square meters of warehouses, and over 2.2 million square meters of yards. It is estimated that the quantity of freight moved via Vietnam’s seaports annually increased by an average of over 12 per cent, of which exports and imports bounced by 14 per cent a year and even more than 16 per cent from 2004 to 2006 (See Table 1), meeting the requirements of increased import and export activities and the country’s economic growth, and well above the pace of investment in seaport construction.

 Among the more than 100 ports, export and import cargoes have moved through44 major ports, accounting for nearly 70 per cent of the quantity of freight passed via the country’s ports. The major harbors are unevenly distributed among the three regions, with 8 ports in Northern Vietnam, 17 ports in Central Vietnam, and 19 ports in Southern Vietnam. Over 102 million MT and 2,756,367 TEUs of freight were moved through the ports in 2006. Of these, port complexes in the south represented 50 per cent and 55 per cent of exports and imports by volume, while the northern seaport clusters controlled 38 per cent and 37 per cent of the quantity of import and export cargoes (See Table 2).

Overall, the cargo-handling capacity of Vietnam’s seaports is still low. There are three major ports in the three regions, namely Hai Phong Port, Da Nang Port and Ho Chi Minh City Port Complex, which comprises of Tan Cang Sai Gon (Sai Gon New Port) and Sai Gon Port. These are large and important harbors, which play a key role in the country’s seaport system. They are currently major traffic leads connecting the north, the center and the south of Vietnam with regional and worldwide seaports. In 2006 alone, the volume of freight handled at the port of Hai Phong totaled over 11 million MT and 464,000 TEUs, at the Da Nang Port reached 2,371 million MT and 37,404 TEUs, and at the ports of Sai Gon and Tan Cang Sai Gon amounted to 31, 127 million MT and 1,620,509 TEUs, making up over 60 per cent of the total cargo tonnage movements via the country’s ports. Moreover, the remaining ports are very small in scale, leading to  little cargo being moved via them .