More customs officers than business 

Ports in HCM City are deserted these days as imports are not arriving, a scenario that is quite different from mid-year when the freight yards were full of containers and businesses had to queue in order to get their imports. 

Dung Thi Anh Nga, Deputy Head of the team in charge of import-export commodities procedures of Saigon Port No 2, said that the import volume has decreased by 50% over the last month, with only 15 customs declarations a day. Sometimes, there have been only 10 customs declarations a day, while the team has 18 employees, which means there were more customs officers than business some days. 

The same situation is occurring at Ben Nghe Port. The team in charge of import-export commodities procedures has 16 employees, while there are only 7-8 customs declarations every day. Nguyen Van Nha, Deputy Head of the Saigon Port Customs Sub-agency No 3, said that in previous years, the sub-agency collected VND 500 billion a week in import-export taxes, while the figure is currently just over VND 100 billion a week. 

Nguyen Xuan Binh, Deputy Head of the customs sub-agency at Saigon Port No 1, said that the consumer import products have decreased by 70% when compared to April and May, while car and motorbike imports have decreased by 90% over the same period of last year. 

Low imports bring opportunities to domestic products 

To explain the sharp decrease of food and consumer product imports, importers have attributed it to the low purchasing power in the domestic market. As for dairy products and confectionary, the imports have been decreasing because customers tend to refuse the products sourced from Asia, as they fear the products are melamine-infected. Meanwhile, the imports from US and France prove to be too expensive and cannot compete with domestic products. 

Tran Binh Trong, an employee of Vietnam Food Joint Stock Company, said that previously the company would import nearly 100 containers, or over 2,000 tons of different kinds of meat. However, the imports have decreased by over 50% due to the tax increase from 12% to 20%. 

Le Trung Thuc, Deputy Head of the Customs Sub-agency of Saigon Port No 1, said that the decreased imports show that the measures by the Government to fight trade deficit has produced effects, while bringing opportunities to local producers. Local consumers now tend to use domestically-made products, which are cheaper and safe. 

The HCM City Customs Agency has also reported decreased import materials in the last few months in comparison with the same period of the last year. The import of plastic materials, for example, have reduced by 81%, steel by 40%, and dairy materials by 30%.