HCM City (VNS/VNA) - The Ho Chi Minh City Union of BusinessAssociations has proposed authorities to resolve difficulties faced bybusinesses suffering from a sharp drop in export orders.

The city’s export in the first quarter of the year is estimated at 10.1 billionUSD, a year-on-year decline of 16.8%.

According to HUBA, most industries struggled to maintain production and dobusiness.

Nguyen Phuoc Hung, its permanent vice chairman, said the biggest difficultiesfaced by export firms, especially in the woodwork and garment and textileindustries, are a lack of export orders and cash flows and inability to borrowfrom banks.

Businesses are also virtually unable to borrow from the Government’s lendingpackage that offers interest rate subsidies of 1.5-2%, he said.

Agricultural land is appraised at very low by banks, so when firms apply forloans using agricultural land as collateral, they will get a very small loanthat is not enough to serve their production and business needs.

In addition, the mortgaged asset value for their existing loans was reducedsignificantly, requiring them to have additional collateral but they almosthave no more asset to do that.

HUBA's surveys have found 41.2% of firms saying they are facing difficultiesdue to the shrinking market, 17.6% due to higher raw material prices, 11.2% dueto human resource shortage and 17.6% due to lack of capital.

Enterprises said though the Government has many supportive policies foreconomic development, beneficiaries are few in reality, with less than 10% ofbusinesses benefiting from financial support.

Small and medium-sized enterprises often lack assets to mortgage, HUBA said.

It wanted the Government to address this issue by valuing agricultural lands atmarket prices, increasing the ratio of loan to mortgaged assets, and offeringunsecured loans.

It said the State Bank of Vietnam should continue to roll over medium- andlong-term loans, and bring down bank lending interest rates.

It called on the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies to provide businesses withlow-interest rate loans so that they could pay wages to employees, which wouldboost purchasing power and benefit the consumer market.

It said the city should promote the 2% interest subsidy programme from the SBV,and direct relevant agencies to organise programmes to link businesses andbanks to easy the credit bottlenecks.

The city needs to enhance ties with Vietnamese trade agencies abroad to helpfoster investment and trade with foreign markets, it added./.