Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam needs to have an appropriate strategy to promote thedevelopment of air logistics and tap its large potential, experts have said.

Le Vuong Quoc,Director of Gemix Vietnam Joint Stock Company, which exports fresh fruits,said that shipping fresh farm produce to Switzerland was not easybecause this country did not have seaports. As there were no directflights from Vietnam to Switzerland, his company must ship through a thirdcountry.

Quoc saidthis pushed up transportation costs, and his company could only export in asmall volume.

In addition,air freight rates in Thailand were always around 30 percent lower than in Vietnam,plus there is a direct route from Thailand to Switzerland, which makes itdifficult for Vietnamese firms to compete with Thailand.

Nguyen DinhTung, General Director of Vina T& T Group Import – Export Company, saidtransporting agricultural products by air would ensure quality and shorten thetime compared to by railway or by sea. However, high air logistics chargesremained a limitation.

Tung pointedout that many Vietnamese airlines had not yet built routes to countries likeSwitzerland, Canada and the US, and shipping largely depended onforeign airlines.

In a recentworkshop, Wackerbauer Lars, senior advisor of IPP Air Cargo, the first cargoairline in Vietnam, said that more than 80 percent of Vietnam’s logisticsmarket was in the hands of foreign companies. Meanwhile, the freight demandkept increasing, fuelled by the boom of e-commerce.

What made Vietnam’sair logistics less competitive was that the freight rates remained high, hesaid, adding that airlines had not paid adequate attention to and pouredadequate investment in air cargo transportation while the infrastructure systemwas limited.

Statisticsof the Ministry of Industry and Trade showed that the market share ofinternational airfreight of three domestic carriers, Vietnam Airlines, VietjetAir and Jetstar Pacific, was around 12-15 percent, while the restwas foreign airlines.

Meanwhile, theair logistics of Vietnam had significant room for growth, driven by theenforcement of free trade agreements which would boost the goods circulationvolume.

According tothe International Air Transport Association, air logistics of Vietnam couldexpand at an average of 6.7 percent per year in 2015-35, higher than theworld average at 3.9 percent and 4.6 percent of the Asia-Pacific region.

In 2021 whenthe COVID-19 pandemic was complex, international passenger transportationdropped by 93 percent to 500,000, but cargo transportation increased by 21.3 percentto 1.1 million tonnes over 2020.

Among fivemajor airlines in operation in Vietnam, none had professionally and separatelyinvested in cargo transportation. IPP Air Cargo which specialises in cargotransportation is waiting for approval.

Airlinesshould cooperate with enterprises in the logistics industry to establish an airlogistics chain to make transportation more convenient and efficient at morereasonable costs.

According toTran Thanh Hai, Deputy Director of the Import-Export Department under theMinistry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam has huge potential for developingair logistics.

However,ground infrastructure was one of the major challenges.

Airportinfrastructure had not invested adequately for cargo freight. There arecurrently 10 international airports in Vietnam, but only two of them, Noi Baiand Tan Son Nhat, have centres for air logistics.

Littleattention was being paid to developing specialised centres for air logistics,which required large scale development and the integration of services and connectivityto reduce logistics costs.

It wasnecessary to have a strategy and cooperation with enterprises and organisationsin the logistics industry to promote air logistics development, Hai said.

“Anappropriate development strategy is important for air cargo transportation totake off,” Hai said./.