Posted on 14 Oct 2009
At the press meeting held last weekend in
In July, ministries of traffic and transportation, trade and industry, planning and investment met and reviewed the project progress. On July 30, the governmental office required Vinashin to re-evaluate reasons and withdraw experience on the implementation of the above project (including FSO5 and building of Aframax crude oil vessel).
According to the $169.2 billion agreement signed in December 2006, Vinashin's Nam Trieu Shipbuilding Industry Corp (Nasico) will be responsible for finishing and handing over the FSO5 floating storage to the investor PTSC on May 1, 2008. Since then, Vinashin for two times has asked to adjust the project progress, the first extension to April 2009 and the second till July 30, 2009. To date, the progress has not been improved much yet because (as saying of Vinashin) of the slow progress of equipment and material supply. But another source reported that financial difficulties of Vinashin/Nasico caused the standstill of the project.
Up to August 31, 2009, Vinashin posted total overdue taxes of over eight billion dong so the customs agency disallowed the group's import of equipments and machines from Monobuoy firm. Also, total money amount that Vinashin has to pay to Monobuoy is estimated to be more than 58 billion dong to open Letter of Credit (L/C) for the contracts has not been yet paid whereas the investor PTSC has completed the last payment phase of $3.05 million to Vinashin already.
According to PTSC, the lagging project is affecting negatively to the business and production operation of PTSC and Vietsovpetro joint venture. PTSC could not be active in business and production between 2008 and 2009 because of turnover lose from doing business with FSO-5 project. The damages of 15 months of slow progress are valued at total $50 million including tax on ship, bank loans, increased prices of contract, derivative costs for hiring project supervision and management.
Another member of PetroVietnam, PV Trans also suffered losses from the slow progress of project on having Vinashin's Dung Quat shipbuilder to build three Aframax 105,000 dwt crude oil vessels worth more than $63.8 million. The deadline for Dung Quat shipbuilder to hand over the first ship (February 2009) passed so long and the Vinashin subsidiary has for 13 times asked to extend the deadline due to financial difficulties.
In other aspect, Vinashin showed financial problems from the start of June and was accused of non-performing debts of 150 billion dong so the group members are going under bankruptcy and thousands of workers could lose jobs. Till now, all problems have not yet been solved absolutely.
Being as one of the state giants and assigned $750 million of G-bond capital, the aforementioned financial difficulties of Vinashin and its members is incomprehensible. Most recently, Vinashin withdrew its whole investment of 1.467 trillion dong worth of 20.4 million shares from Bao Viet Group. In line with market price, Vinashin lost about 600-650 billion dong from the deal.
From the fact, it is questioned whether the group's non-core investments are relating to the current financial difficulties or not.
