Cai Mep celebrates new calls

This comes following the addition of five new service calls at the terminal since May 2015. The growth follows an 80% expansion in container traffic at CMIT in 2015 over the previous year to 724,768 teu.

Robert Hambleton, CMIT managing director, said: “One of the factors that has supported the increase in new service calls has been the consistent improvement in local transportation infrastructure, which has reduced the time necessary for trucking containers from the port area through to Ho Chi Minh City to approximately 90 minutes, as opposed to three hours just two years ago.”

CMIT is a deep-water facility located in the Ba Ria‐Vung Tau Province, southeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam’s economy is one of the fastest-growing in Asia, the International Monetary Fund’s April Regional Survey projected that the Vietnamese economy will expand by 6.3% in 2016 and 6.2% in 2017.

In August of 2015, the European Union and Vietnam signed the principles of a Free Trade Agreement which will eliminate tariffs, and open Vietnamese markets to EU food products, as well as reduce non-tariff barriers to EU exports, and open Vietnam to European service providers, including maritime transportation.

Vietnamese ports handled a combined 10.6m teu in 2015, which represented an annual growth rate of 16% on the previous year.

Mr Hambleton, concluded: “We will continue to work closely with the Vietnamese Ministries of Transport, Finance and Planning and Investment to ensure dredging and other port-associated infrastructure requirements are in place, as well as with the shipping lines seeking the productivity and efficiency that we can provide, as Vietnam continues to become an increasingly important global trading partner.”