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Domestic contractors hurt as sand exports push prices up
Increased sand exports have put stifled domestic supplies, driving prices in the Mekong Delta to levels that building contractors say they cannot afford.
Le Thanh Tung, director of Hong Loan Real Estate Company in Can Tho City, said about a year ago sand for construction was sold at VND15,000 (US$0.85) a cubic meter, but now the price has doubled.
A 75-hectare project, for instance, would need up to 1.5 cubic meters of sand and the price hike could translate to huge additional costs for the project, Tung said.
Sand prices in Soc Trang Province also surged 30 percent over the last month, forcing many contractors to quit their ongoing projects.
Vo Thanh Hung, head of the Can Tho City Industrial Zones Authority, said even sand providers could not ensure their own supplies and they refused to sign long-term contracts with building firms, holding the right to increase prices.
The director of a construction firm in Can Tho said local sand prices have increased sharply because of excessive sand exports.
If the government banned sand export, prices would fall, benefiting construction firms and state projects, he said.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said it has requested Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to ban sand exports after inspecting the mining and exporting of sand in the Mekong Delta, which accounts for most of Vietnam’s sand exports.
The minisry found that the delta had shipped 9.2 million cubic meters of sand in the first eight months this year, compared with a total 1.1 million cubic meters last year. The region has granted at least 128 licenses which allow a combined sand mining of 321.6 million cubic meters.
The request for an export ban followed a similar proposal from the Ministry of Construction earlier this month.
“We should halt sand exports until all provinces can provide specific information on reserves, exploitation capacity and plans to meet demand,” Le Van Toi, head of the Department for Construction Materials at the Construction Ministry, said in an interview with Bloomberg on September 16.
Unplanned dredging can cause landslides and riverbank collapses along the Mekong River in Vietnam’s southern region, which provides the bulk of sand for export, he said.
The boost in sand exports from the delta followed a ban by Cambodia, also on environmental and domestic supply concerns. Sand from Cambodia was being transported to other countries in the region via the Mekong Delta.
thanhnien, Tuoi Tre
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