Bicycle makers to resume EU exports

Company representatives said they have been following EC regulations since the beginning of the year and are delighted by the commission’s ruling.

A number of domestic firms are holding talks with former partners as well as domestic and international components suppliers about resuming exports.

Local firms will begin re-exporting to the EU as soon as their partners place orders, Vo Trung Chi, from Dragon Company, said.

Chi said exports were hit hard by the anti-dumping tax five years ago.

Asama Yuh Jiun Int’l Vietnam is also planning to resume exports.

"Shortly after receiving the announcement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we contacted our partners [in Europe]. The first products will be exported as soon as importers receive the go-ahead from customs," said the company’s marketing director, Chau Vinh Chi.

"We have also taken on new workers to meet future demand," Chi said.

Despite optimism from domestic bike makers, they say they have yet to be informed about the EC’s new tax rate.

The Vietnamese bike industry was hit hard by the EC’s anti-dumping tax, which averaged 34.5 percent, five years ago.

In 2005, Vietnam exported nearly 1.1 million bicycles to the EU. However, that number fell to 21,400 in 2009.

In response to the dumping tax, production fell to 200,000 bikes a year, just 10 percent of 2005’s capacity. Two years after the tax was imposed, the export value plummeted 95.3 percent.

As a result, a number of bicycle manufacturers went bankrupt or had to shift production to new goods.

The number of workers in the industry reduced by more than 40 percent, from 210,000 workers before 2005 to just 5,000 currently.