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Car import: Is there fraud in declared taxable prices?
It is clear that automobile joint ventures are inferior to other enterprises in importing and distributing cars with the brand names of parent groups. Analysts believe there could be fraud being committed in the declaration of table prices.
The Thanh Cong Automobile Group has recently become the sole partner of southern automobile manufacturer Hyundai Motor authorised to import, assemble and distribute passenger cars with Hyundai brand name in Vietnam’s market.
This is really a surprise to many people, since another company also signed a similar cooperation contract with Hyundai several years ago, and with similar commitments, which means that the company also has the right to import, distribute and assemble the cars with Hyundai brand name in Vietnam. It is Hyundai Vietnam Automobile Joint Stock Company. As such, Hyundai Vietnam has two official partners.
Representative from one of the two distribution companies revealed that the companies will have a meeting with Hyundai Motor to discuss the existence and operation of the companies.
However, the more important story here is that there are many other companies that import and distribute Hyundai brand name cars. And a paradox exists that the number of cars imported and distributed by those companies is much larger than the numbers of cars imported and distributed by the two official distributors.
Who is stronger?
Vietnam’s automobile market has nearly all the big names of the automobile industry in the world, from small-size, medium-class to luxury car producers.
Most automobile joint ventures in Vietnam are carrying out two modes of business at the same time, assembling cars domestically and importing cars under complete built unit (CBU) for domestic sale.
The noteworthy thing here is that the numbers of cars imported and distributed by automobile joint ventures are lower than the numbers of cars of the same brand names imported and distributed by other companies.
Statistics show that about 30-40,000 passenger cars are imported into Vietnam every year. Meanwhile, automobile joint ventures only import and distribute 1,000 cars. How can this be?
Joint ventures say that they have to prepare well before importing a model of car, from ensuring sources of supply, sales agent networks, sales regime and post-sale services. Meanwhile, other companies do not do have to do these things.
The explanation seems to be reasonable, because no other import enterprise in Vietnam can compete with joint ventures in professionalism and sales agent networks. However, the problem is that consumers still prefer purchasing cars from enterprises rather than from joint ventures.
Consumers say that they prefer other enterprises to joint ventures because the enterprises offer cars at lower prices and have more diverse models, while they still get the same quality products.
It has been asked how these other enterprises can offer cars at lower prices than joint ventures?
Analysts believe that many enterprises have been declaring lower taxable import prices than the actual import prices in order to evade tax. They have called on government agencies to inspect CBU imports and check taxable prices.
VietNamNet, VnMedia
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