Ngoc Lan
TKV has failed to sign any big export contracts since June 20 as its coal price is higher than that of other suppliers, the group’s deputy general director Nguyen Van Bien said.
The group has lately signed contracts of exporting only thousands of tons of some high-quality coal categories while it is unable to sell medium-grade coal which is often exported under contracts of over one million tons each.
The reason for this as explained by Bien is the export tax increase from 10% to 13% on July 7, causing TKV to raise the export price correspondingly by at least US$3 per ton depending on different categories.
The prices of different categories of coal offered by TKV have gone up by a couple to dozens of U.S. dollars per ton.
China’s Guangzhou coal of the 11A category is priced at US$55-56 per ton while the same coal of TKV is offered at US$69.
“We have continuously reduced production costs but still had to increase the prices,” said Bien. While many countries impose a 0% export tax, the export tax in Vietnam is 13%, which is unfavorable for local businesses.
To reduce costs, TKV cut workers’ wage by 10% last year from the previous year and by 5% early this year. However, as coal is now exploited at greater depth and even if technological costs are cut, it is impossible to lower the prices.
According to TKV, if the consumption reduces by 10%, some 10,000 workers will lose jobs.
With the tax increase of 3 percentage points and supposing that TKV exports three million tons of coal each month, the State budget will have an additional VND100 billion of tax sums. However, due to the high prices, TKV will fail to compete with other exporters, so the export volume will tumbled, resulting in a loss of over VND1 trillion for the State coffer in terms of natural resource tax, environmental fee and VAT, according to Bien.
TKV has proposed the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Finance to lower the export tax. Nevertheless, the new tax rate has been imposed recently, which will impact the group’s export volume.
As per the group’s business plan, TKV’s coal consumption volume, including both domestic consumption and export, will be around 43 million tons this year, but only 38-39 million tons is obtainable.
The power industry is the largest consumer of coal. However, the price of coal sold to the power industry is equivalent to 83-87% of the coal production cost. Normally, TKV uses profits earned from coal export to cover losses caused by such low selling price.
Đăng ký: VietNam News