The city’s ports handle well over 50 million tonnes of goods a year. A few years ago the Government projected them to handle a mere 26 million tonnes by 2010 and 35 million tonnes in 2020.

Ho Kim Lan, general secretary of the Viet Nam Ports Association, said growth in container cargo, which is at 3.4 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) a year now, was growing at 25 per cent a year.

City authorities are set to revise the goods-handling target to 100 million tonnes per year by 2010 and 200 million tonnes by 2020 in a bid to deal with the speedy growth in goods volume through ports. They are also carrying out a Government-approved plan to move 11 city ports along the Sai Gon River to suburbs, with five of them to be relocated by 2010.

But so far only New Port has been moved to Cat Lai Port in District 2. The other four, Ba Son Shipyard, Sai Gon, Tan Thuan Dong, and Rau Qua ports, are still in the process of carrying out land acquisition and other preliminary work.

The shifting of the ports is unlikely to be completed before the deadline set by the Government, according to a Ministry of Transport inspection team.

The delay has been attributed to port operators’ failure to find investors or foreign partners for the new ports.

Poor infrastructure at the new sites - including roads and waterways, water, power, and communication - have also deterred investors.

For instance, IPC general director Phan Hong Quan said, the under-construction Sai Gon Port Container Terminal in Nha Be District’s Hiep Phuoc area, expected to be commissioned by mid-2009 with an annual capacity of 1.5 million TEU, has no access to roads. All the roads leading to the port are only half-finished.

The sluggishness in relocating the other ports is putting pressure on New Port, which is struggling to cope with the burgeoning volume of sea-borne goods, according to port authorities.

Any change in policy or increase in cargo volume causes a logjam in ports and hold up goods interminably.

For instance, a recent decision by Sai Gon Customs Bureau’s region No 4 to stop accepting a number of goods at inland container depots has caused a fear among port operators of backlogs.

Nguyen Van Minh, deputy general director of Sai Gon Port, said it would face a backlog within 10 days since it received 1,000 containers a day but its storage capacity was just around 10,000 containers.