Vinalines to divest capital from 13 firms this year

The corporation will reduce its ownership in six businesses and divest completely from seven others.

With this divestment plan, the liquidation of vessels and impact of its shrunken market share in temporary import for re-export services, the firm forecasts its consolidated revenue this year will decrease by 14.5% from 2019 to over VND10.31trn ($444.26m).

Since 2013, when Vinalines began restructuring, the firm has divested capital from many companies, cutting the number of its subsidiaries from 73 to 35.

Notably, it has divested all capital invested in enterprises operating in other sectors like banking, securities, insurance and real estate to focus on its main business sectors of seaports, sea transportation and maritime services.

Divestments from poorly-performing subsidiaries have helped slash the group’s debt from more than VND67.5trn (before restructuring began) to over VND17trn, the corporation noted.

Vinalines has joint ventures in a number of port operations, in Haiphong, Cai Mep and HaLong. The company has reported losses during the Corona Virus epidemic as they must skip Chinese ports to lower the risk of infection while many of their shipping partners and customers were in China.

According to Vinalines' website, during the epidemic, many of its companies lost up to 70% of the volume compared to the same period last year.

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