Monday, December 22, 2008

Binh Dinh shipbuilding losing ground


However the age lasted all of five years, from 1998 to 2002. In the last three years it has had just 7-8 orders.

The company’s predicament is common to many shipbuilders in the central coastal province of Binh Dinh.

Truong Van Lam, deputy manager of the company, says they used to get customers coming from provinces of Kien Giang, Ba Ria–Vung Tau, Thanh Hoa and Quang Binh, but now the few they do have are all local residents.

Binh Dinh’s traditional vocation of building high-capacity ships for off-shore fishing dates back to the 1890s, when fishing became the local residents’ main source of income. In the late nineties, the vocation enjoyed a resurgence as the Government redeveloped off-shore fishing and gave soft loans to local fishermen to rebuild their lives after the massive damage inflicted by storm Linda at the end of 1997.

This provided the shipbuilders a golden opportunity to expand their business.

The number of shipbuilding plants as well as orders from inside and outside the province increased dramatically.

In its golden age, the province had more than 40 shipbuilding plants along the De Gi, Tam Quan, and Qui Nhon beaches, building about 500 high-capacity fishing vessels each year, and providing 2,500 labourers with stable jobs.

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