VietNamNet Bridge - The Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines), which was considered the country’s leading shipping firm, had by mid-2015 reportedly owed VND2.3 trillion to commercial banks.

 

Vinalines had by mid-2015 reportedly owed VND2.3 trillion to commercial banks.

The Vietnam Stock Depository Center has said that the procedures to transfer 6.94 million PHP shares of the Hai Phong Port JSC from Vinalines to VietinBank has been completed.

PHP shares officially entered the Hanoi bourse on August 12, 2015 with the reference price of VND16,500 per share on the first trading day. On December 30, PHP shares were traded around VND21,000 per share.

With such a price, the total value of the shares transferred to VietinBank is estimated at VND146 billion, according to Bizlive.

In July 2015, Vietinbank proposed to the Government and the Ministry of Transport to allow it to take over 51 percent of Vinalines’ shares in Vinalines Dinh Vu Port JSC as the payment for Vinalines’ debts.

Vinalines believes that in the future, if the debts can be restructured and measures to change the business management can be taken, the joint venture ports will recover in the context of the global economic recovery.

In September, VietinBank became the strategic shareholder of a subsidiary of Vinalines – the Sai Gon Port, now holding 19.6 million shares, or 9.07 percent of the port’s chartered capital.

The big losses Vinalines has incurred from joint ventures with foreign partners which run four deep-water ports have put pressure on Vinalines’ restructuring process.

Dau Tu quoted its sources as saying that a taskforce in charge of restructuring the joint ventures has been set up with both Vinalines’ chair Le Anh Son and CEO Nguyen Canh Tinh being the members.

The taskforce, when checking the business performance of the four joint ventures, which have been incurring big losses, will consider withdrawing capital or transferring the contributed capital to other investors.

Three of the four ports have been exploited at a moderate level. These include SP-PSA, a joint venture of Vinalines, Sai Gon Port and Singaporean PSA, where Vinalines contributes 15 percent of capital; CMIT (Vinalines 36 percent, Sai Gon Port and Danish APMT); CICT (Cai Lan CPI, a subsidiary of Vinalines, 51 percent, and the US Carrix/SSA). The remaining is in ‘hibernation’ – SSIT, a joint venture between Vinalines which contributes 11.7 percent of capital, Sai Gon Port and Carrix/SSA

Vinalines believes that in the future, if the debts can be restructured and measures to change the business management can be taken, the joint venture ports will recover in the context of the global economic recovery.

However, the problem is that Vinalines is not financially capable enough to maintain the operation of Cai Mep – Thi Vai ports.

SSA Marine and IFC are waiting to negotiate with Vinalines’ new investors on the debt restructuring.

According to Son, the investments in the joint ventures are $200-500 million, 70 percent of which is sourced from commercial loans from financial institutions.


NCDT