Saigon New Port sees 2007 revenue up 22 pct
HANOI - Saigon New Port Company, Vietnam's largest container port operator, expects revenue to jump 22 percent this year to $98 million as it expands cargo handling capacity, a company official said on Wednesday.
The unlisted, Ho Chi Minh City-based firm, which is owned by the navy, expected to handle 1.8 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) this year, 22 percent up from 2006, said Tran Khanh Hoang, head of the Marketing & External Relations Department.
"We expect revenue growth this year to be similar to the growth of our cargo handling of 22 percent," Hoang told an internation conference on Vietnam's ports and logistics in Hanoi.
Vietnam's economy is growing at a robust 8 percent a year, putting pressure on port operators to expand and upgrade.
Revenue reached 1.3 trillion dong ($80.4 million) in 2006, when the firm handled 42 percent of Vietnam's cargo, he said.
Container volume growth of 19.8 percent per year in 1995-2006 would accelerate to 25 percent in coming years, industry experts said at the conference.
Public information about Vietnam's military-run companies is still rare, but expanding services such as the telecoms and shipping industries have revealed some details about businesses controlled by the Defence Ministry.
Military-run Viettel, a major telecoms player, said it will help form a bank and a hydro-power construction firm in Cambodia.
Hoang did not give a profit target for 2007 but said profit growth this year would be slower than the revenue growth due to rising costs such as fuel.
Last December the navy restructured Saigon New Port Co into a holding entity.
The military has no plans to divest interest in the parent firm but subsidiaries such as the operator of Cai Mep deep-water container port would be opened to the public, Hoang said.
"We may have an equitisation plan for Cai Mep port's first phase," he said, referring to the partial privatisation.
In January the company started building the first phase of Cai Mep port with a $78 million investment in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau where the government plans to relocate Saigon Port and related facilities over the next few years.
The port, 70 km (43 miles) east of Ho Chi Minh City, would be capable for handling vessels of 80,000 DWT and would be opened in September 2008, Hoang said.
Top forwarder Gemadept Corp (GMD.HM: Quote, Profile, Research) has said it would also start building a $410 million deep-water container port in Cai Mep next year to handle more transhipments in Vietnam.
In April, Saigon New Port Co started construction on the second phase of Cai Mep port while it has been talking with three foreign firms over possibilities of establishing a venture, Hoang said without naming the three.
Investment for the port's second phase would be $153 million and the Vietnamese firm would hold a 36-percent stake in the venture, Hoang added.
By Ho Binh Minh - Reuters - September 19, 2007.
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