Sitting At Anchor
Vũng Tàu. I picked Vũng Tàu. I was a young economist at the U.S. Maritime Administration, right out of college. My bosses had me study Vietnamese ports to help decide which one to develop as a container port – assuming the U.S. won the war. I looked at potential markets, water depths, that sort of stuff – and chose Vũng Tàu. Many years later I was on business in Ho Chi Minh City, had a free day, and visited Vũng Tàu, which I had never seen. My choice, consigned to the dustbin of history, was apparently sound, because the Vietnamese were expanding the port. Maybe they used an upstart economist, too.
An article in Asia Times last week looked at the current state of Vietnam’s ports and plans for expansion. Vietnam has forty ports, but most would not be considered modern and cargo throughput is small. The country’s ports handled a bit more than five million 20-foot container equivalents (TEUs) during 2008. Compare that to the 24 million TEUs that passed through Hong Kong. One Malaysian port, Tanjung Pelepas, moves more containers annually than all of Vietnam’s ports, despite a far smaller population.
Vietnam’s ports are stunting the country’s growth, making new port infrastructure imperative. There is a lack of waterfront, container cranes or even deep water to allow modern container ships to bring their cargoes to port. Cargo bound to or from Vietnam must first transit, say, Singapore, Kaoshiung or Hong Kong where it can be shifted to the smaller vessels that most Vietnamese ports can handle.
When Will The Cranes Arrive?
Vietnam has plans to fix this, if only they can find $56 billion. A large chunk of change would go to Nha Trang, where a new transit port is planned to handle up to two million TEUs a year beginning in 2015. Plans envisage moving more than four million TEUs in and out of Nha Trang eventually. Other ports will be developed, according to the Ports Master Plan, to offer berths for container ships of up to 15,000 TEU capacity (currently, the world’s largest), as well as to handle 400,000 DWT tankers and coal and ore carriers up to 300,000 DWT. Big plans.
But where to find $56 billion? The Vietnamese Government says it can only pay for perhaps 15% of the total. Just like in America, government officials mutter generalities about public-private partnerships for the rest. Given a dismal history of corruption and sheer wastage, I don’t think the ports of Hong Kong or Singapore have much to worry about.
