Readymade garment (RMG) factory owners of Vietnam recently reported the problem of paying “under the table” fees for movement of their containers from Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, to Hai Phong City. A garment company owner informed a local daily that he had to pay US $ 400 for one container of exports to be carried from Hanoi to Hai Phong City, while it takes him only US $ 100 to transport it from Hai Phong City to Japan.
Confirming the news, Pham Xuan Hong, Deputy Chair, Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS) held the service providers responsible for this, as there is no basis for defining service fees, which they take undue advantage of, by raising the fees. “Of unofficial expenses, the ‘lubricant fee’, or the fee paid to ‘lubricate’ state agency apparatus, is the highest,” added Hong.
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Smuggling of cloth and input materials from China has been a matter of concern for the Vietnamese garment industry since long, as the smugglers pay a “special lubricant fee”, and smuggle and sell products at lower prices than the importers who pay tax. Apart from this problem, higher insurance and healthcare premiums are another concern with the garment enterprises in Vietnam. While a premium of 5 per cent is levied in Myanmar, Vietnamese garment factory owners are burdened with premiums as high as 30 per cent.
