Cold storages are filled up with pangasius and shrimp during the covid-19 pandemic.
Vietnam is completely lacking cold storages. Due to the huge investment cost into cold storage, the capacity of cold storages in Vietnam does not catch up with the industry’s demand.
Vasep proposed the Prime Minister and State Bank of Vietnam to adopt a policy for cold storage development. Particularly, the policy must cover a 0% interest rate in the first two months and a 50% decrease in interest rate for the next four years on long-term loans which are used to build cold storages with capacity of at least 5,000 pallets. Besides, a further 50% drop in business income tax in the first two months after the cold storage is put into operation must be applied.
Prices of pangasius and shrimp are seriously falling because farmers are afraid of a further drop in price and pushing an early harvest. Meanwhile, companies have stopped buying materials when their delivery is cancelled, postponed and no new order is placed. On the other hand, their cold storages are overloaded and there is no room for materials.
Many cold storages have been hired for storing fish materials by pangasius companies, thus, shrimp companies in the Mekong Delta must hire cold storages from lessors in the Central to keep shrimp materials after buying them from farmers.
VFM
