Despite high growth, the competitiveness of Vietnam’s economy is still lower than that of others in the Southeast Asian region given a slew of factors, especially exorbitant transportation costs. Transportation costs in Vietnam are among the highest in the region, making local producers less competitive at home and abroad.

There are a lot of reasons for the high transportation costs but one of them is the mushrooming of BOT road toll stations in many parts of the nation. Transporters have complained about all sorts of fees on the road, which have pushed up domestic goods prices and thus eroded the competitiveness of the economy. They say they have to pay the annual road fee while they find themselves besieged by tollgates at the same time.

Bui Danh Lien, chairman of the Hanoi Transport Association, told a seminar in Hanoi last week on toll fees at build-operate-transport road development projects that investors of such projects have the right to recoup their investment capital. But the high concentration of tollgates on certain roads has delivered a blow to transportation firms, manufacturers and the general public.

HCMC now has six toll stations and will build four more in the 2016-2025 period. Moreover, around HCMC area, there will be 10 more. Up in the north, there are four toll stations between Hanoi and neighboring Thai Binh Province.

Take a 42-seat sleep bus for example, Lien says. The bus running from Hanoi to Nghe An through Ben Thuy Bridge will have to pay return toll fees totaling VND24 million a month, plus VND21 million in monthly bus station fees if it makes a round trip a day. He says this is a heavy financial burden because the bus is not always full.

Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Hong Truong told the seminar that financial plans for BOT road projects are carefully crafted to ensure the benefits of the investor, the lender bank and the road user.

But Lien said BOT road construction contracts mostly protect the interests of developers. He called for BOT road developers to weigh the interests of individual and corporate road users. Otherwise, the Vietnamese economy will continue lagging behind others in the region.

Source: Saigon Times