It’s time to install technical barrier on glass imports

Vieglass has suggested that it would play the consultancy role in assessing and examining the quality of glass imports to Vietnam, to ensure that the imports can meet the standards set by Vietnam.

The proposal has been made after people complained about the chaotic glass market and the confusion about the quality of glass products. Vietnam has imported 12 million sq m of equivalent glass in the first seven months of the year alone, a figure which has never been seen before. And the chaos of the glass market has never been so serious as it is presently.

Analysts have pointed out that in other countries, which have to struggle with trade frauds and low quality imports from China, a technical barrier is always used by associations as the effective tool to define the real positions of producers. This does not come contrary to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The analysts said that in many cases, when making tax declarations, importers lower the thickness of glass imports in order to evade tax. In other cases, importers collude with construction projects’ investors to put the products with under-standard thickness into the projects.

That explains why a lot of low quality products have still been used for construction projects.

Some import companies declared the taxable values of the products lower than the actual values by 50-70%. As the result, the prices of imported products are equal to 30-40% of the domestically made products.

Currently, imported glass products are thought to be cheaper than Vietnamese-made products. However, local producers have pointed out that the imports must not be VND 10-15,000/ standard sq m lower than locally made products if they have the same technical parameters.

Vietnamese glass producers have sit together and concluded that if counting on all the production costs, transport costs, and the taxes, the sale prices of import products must not be as low as the current sale prices on the market.

However, the argument by domestic glass producers have been facing disagreement from many experts who believe that Vietnamese companies have higher production costs than foreign companies due to the higher mazut price in the domestic market.

It is true that the mazut price in Vietnam is higher than that in regional countries. When the world’s oil price surged to US $140 a barrel, domestic glass producers had to buy mazut at VND13,000/kg. When the oil price reduced by 50% to US $61-64 a barrel, the companies still have buy at VND11,900/kg, or two folds higher than in other countries.

In the recent dispatch sent to the Prime Minister and relevant ministries, Vieglass wrote that if the mazut price is not lowered, if the glass imports continue flocking into Vietnam, and if Vietnam keeps the low tax of 5% on the imports from ASEAN, a lot of glass producers will go bankrupted.