The plan was built after Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Group (Vinacomin) announced to import 9,500 tons of coal from Indonesia to serve new thermo power plants in the central and southern regions. This is the first time Vietnam—which has been a coal exporter—becomes an importer of this kind of commodity. Vinacomin expects that the coal import would take place in 2012.

According to estimates of Vinacomin, the coal import from now to 2012 will be around 10 million tons a year, and that will be raised to 100 million tons by 2020. Meanwhile, the group plans to export nearly 2 million tons of coal a month or almost 20 million tons a year.

“We really are worried about the situation and it is right time to impose higher export tariffs on coal to avoid the rapid exhaustion of resources”, a Ministry of Finance official shared.

Specialists also agreed with the impose of higher export tariff on coal because Vietnam’s coal for export has a higher quality while the imported source is in low quality and contains high risks of environmental pollution.

In May, the coal output was estimated at 3.98 million tons, up 7.5% year on year, bringing total figure of first 5 months of 2011 to 19.2 million tons, growing 5.5% against one year earlier.

In addition, last month Vietnam exported 2 million tons of fossil coal for $192 million, lifting the fossil coal export in Jan-May to 6.64 million tons worth $638 million, down 25% in volume.

Previously, Ministry of Finance also decided to hike export tariffs on iron ores, refined iron ore, and pirit ore to 40% from 30% starting from July 2. The measure, the Ministry explained, is one of moves to reduce export of iron ores.