Logistic Association said that a 40 feet container from Lang Son province to HCMC must go through 29 toll stations with the total cost of VND4.8 million. Logistics cost now accounts for a high ratio in the business cost structure of Vietnamese firms.

In a report to the Government, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said that business costs in Vietnam reduced with lot of efforts last year although they were still higher than that in other nations in the Southeast Asia and the world.

One of the factors contributing to the cost decrease is the Prime Minister’s approval of road toll cut from VND140,000 to VND120,000 to vehicles of group 4 and VND200,000 to VND180,000 to group 5.

At the time of issuing the report, 35 out of 73 BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) projects had lowered toll levels.

In addition, social insurance contribution rate to labor accident and occupation disease funds has been slashed from 1 percent to 0.5 percent as per Decree 44.

Credit institutions has cut short term loan rate by 0.5 percent a year in priority fields.

The Ministry of Finance had sent 17 draft circulars to ministries and relevant sides to get their opinions about abolishing 10 types of fees and reducing 21 others by 5-25 percent. The new circulars are expected to be issued early this year.

However, there are about 300 documents stipulating specialized inspections in agriculture, health and other fields with high and very high costs. For instance, certificating the origin of some seafood products exploited for export costs over VND700 million for 1,200 certificates to a medium scale tuna export firm.

Moreover, busineses have to pay a slew of unofficial costs, much higher than the above official.

According to the Statistics Office of Vietnam, 127,000 businesses were established last year with capital approximating VND1.3 trillion, a year on year increase of 15.2 percent in the number of businesses and 45.4 percent in registered capital.

Registered capital per business averaged VND10.2 billion, up 26.2 percent.

As high as 61,000 stopped operation, down 0.2 percent and 12,000 completed procedures to dissolve. Of these, 91.5 percent have the capital scale of less than VND10 billion.

SGGP