"Vietnam will become a motorcycle export center"

The new General Director of Honda Vietnam Company (HVN), Mr. Minoru Kato, has just shared with the press about the goal of making Vietnam a center for exporting motorbikes to the regional market.

Honda is the brand with the highest localization rate for each product in the Vietnamese motorcycle industry.

The Japanese carmaker's report said that Honda's sales in the Vietnamese market in fiscal year 2013 decreased slightly by 5% to 1.85 million vehicles compared to the previous year. However, according to Mr. Minoru Kato, this was an almost inevitable decrease due to the general difficulties of the economy. In fact, despite the decrease in output, Honda's market share in the Vietnamese market increased by 5.5%, to 68%.

Currently, HVN is also the company with the highest localization rate in the motorcycle industry. On average, the localization rate of the motorcycle models produced by this company is over 93%, some products have reached a localization rate of up to 97%.

Notably, many important spare parts have been actively produced in the factory system located in Vietnam. Of which, the gear factory with an investment capital of 457 billion VND went into operation in January 2013 with a capacity of 2.3 million products/year; in April 2013, the new spare parts center officially went into operation with an investment capital of 180 billion VND; most recently, in April 2014, the piston workshop with the largest capacity of Honda Group with a total investment capital of 231 billion VND also officially went into production with a total output of 2.4 million products/year.

In 2013, Honda Vietnam exported a total of 32,600 complete vehicles, reaching a turnover value of 163 million USD, an increase of 50% compared to 2012. Of which, most of HVN's vehicle models were exported, especially the Dunk model which was produced exclusively for the Japanese market.

“Our goal is to gradually turn Vietnam into a regional motorcycle export hub. It is estimated that HVN’s export market in the next fiscal year will expand to 22 countries and territories, striving to achieve an export turnover of about 247 million USD,” said Mr. Kato.

Vietnam is currently one of the four largest consumer markets and also one of the four largest production centers of Honda worldwide. It is expected that in October 2014, the third motorcycle factory located in Ha Nam province will officially come into operation, thereby increasing the total capacity of the three factories in Vietnam to 2.5 million vehicles/year.

According to VnEconomy