Vietnam’s largest
state-owned shipping firm and port operator, has been forced to put six ships
up for sale as the global shipping crisis takes its toll, the shipping firm said in
a document sent to the Ministry of Transport.
Vinalines
has put up the 20-year-old cargo vessel Vinalines Global for sale
in a move to cut its mounting losses. Photo from marinetraffic.com
Vinalines has set a
target of selling six ships, including 20-year-old ships that can carry cargoes
of more than 70,000 in dead weight tonnage (DWT).
Vinalines is a victim of
the global shipping slowdown that started in 2008 and has yet to show signs of
a recovery, the shipping firm said.
The Baltic Dry Index,
which is a measure of the price of shipping bulk cargoes around the world,
especially large bulk dry cargoes such as grain, iron ore and containers, has
slipped by 80-90 percent over the past seven years.
The index at some point
was down to 290, 98 percent down from its peak during 2006–2008.
It now stands at 293,
nearly 50 percent down from a year ago, and almost 40 percent down so far this
year.
The loss-making shipping
group said that adverse market conditions had led to mounting company losses
over the past few years.
Vinalines said it would
sell at least three of the six ships for around 10 times less than it paid for
them. For example, Vinalines Star, which was bought for VND378 billion, is up
for grabs for only VND34.4 billion.
The Vietnamese
government established Vinalines in 1995, adopting the operating model of South
Korea's giant conglomerates known as “chaebol”.
However, Vinalines
reportedly incurred losses of VND434 billion in 2011 while it was running 14
ports and managing 154 ships, mostly cargo vessels and oil tankers.
According to government
inspectors, Vinalines spent more than $1 billion between 2005 and 2010 to buy
73 second-hand ships.
The shipping line also
spent $9 million on an old floating dock from a Singaporean firm that had a
price tag of only $5 million, and then spent $26.3 million on repair work.
The unused dock was
mocked by the press as an “iron heap”, symbolic of Vinalines’ losses, as
criticism came flooding in of misspent state funds and the company’s lax
management.
Earlier this week,
Vinalines managed to sell the floating dock for a meager $1.7 million.
Source: E.vnexpress
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