|
Publishing industry in turmoil over increased fees, prices
Publishing houses are considering raising the sale prices of publications or reducing the numbers of copies issued to deal with rising paper prices and printing fees.
Everything getting more expensive
Quach Thu Nguyet, Director of the Youth Publishing House in HCM City, said that the publishing industry had never met as many difficulties as nowadays. Paper prices and printing fees both have been increasing sharply, and now account for 25-30% of publishing costs.
Editorial offices of many newspapers in HCM City have had to raise sale prices because of skyrocketing expenses. Newsprint and printing fees prove to be the two most costly expenses, now accounting for 60-70% of the production costs of a newspaper.
In early 2008, a tonne of newsprint was priced at VND12mil, while it is now selling at VND17mil. Regarding printing fees, printing houses have threatened to raise printing fees by 14.6-20% as the prices of materials (printing ink and chemical substances) have increased by 30% over the end of 2007.
Tran Huy Tien, Chief Accountant of HCM City-based Nguoi lao dong newspaper, said that the newspaper has to raise its sale price, if not, it will not have money to run.
In fact, newspapers have been trying to cut expenses, but they have not been able to offset the newsprint increases. Vu Van Binh, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Tuoi tre newspaper, said that in 2007 Tuoi tre spent VND62bil on newsprint and VND47bil on printing fees, but it expects to spend VND97bil and VND62.5bil respectively in 2008.
Reducing copies to reduce losses
According to Ho Van Nam, Head of the Materials Division under the Military Printing House No 1, the paper price has increased four times since March, while printing material prices have increased by 5-10%. The minimum wage of labourers has also increased by 20% as regulated by the state, another reason for higher printing production costs.
Nguyen Xuan Tong, General Director of Duong Sat Printing Company, said that his company may not make profit this year due to the higher material prices. He said his company may even have to cut staff salaries.
Phung Quoc Bao, Director of the Hanoi National University Publishing House, said that his house has to raise the sale prices of textbooks for students and not print as many copies of some book titles because the house cannot afford high printing expenses.
Queuing to buy paper
The Tan Mai Paper Joint Stock Company has announced the new paper price at VND14.38mil/tonne, an increase of VND3.09mil/tonne compared to the beginning of the year.
However, buyers have to queue up to get deliveries, because orders are not delivered for a month.
Printing paper has increased by VND1-1.05mil/tonne to VND16.8-18.6mil/tonne and the product is expected to increase by another VND1mil/tonne. Bai Bang’s paper price has increased by VND2mil/tonne on average over April – now staying at VND19mil/tonne.
Explaining the paper price increases, Deputy Director of Tan Mai Paper Joint Stock Company Phan Minh Nghia said that the prices of input materials all have skyrocketed (pulp, scrap paper, coal and FO oil) by 20-50% over the same period of last year.
Vu Ngoc Bao, Secretary General of the Vietnam Paper Association, said that after the April price increase, the paper price once again rose sharply by 5-21% in July. Bao said that the paper price increases prove to be unavoidable as the dollar price increase has also forced the paper price up.
He added that the domestic paper price is still VND1mil/tonne lower than the world’s price. The paper output of Vietnam is expected to increase by 18% to 1.2mil tonnes in 2008.
VNN
|
