Many enterprises in Quang Binh Province are struggling due to massive frozen fish inventories after buying fish from local fishermen affected by the recent fish deaths.

Local companies halted the purchase of fish from April following the Formosa toxic waste incident. To stabilise the situation and support the fishermen, the government and authorities in Quang Binh called on local firms to buy fish and said that they would receive a 20% subsidy and free interest rates for six months from banks.

A cold storage full of frozen fish in Quang Binh province

The preferential policy encouraged many companies in Quang Binh Province to buy fish. However, since the mass fish deaths, the consumption of seafood in region and wider country has fallen, leading to the slow sales of fish for the companies. As a result, the majority of the fish have remained in stock.

Truong Thi Muoi, Deputy Director of Duc Hieu Ltd. Co., said that before the mass fish deaths, her company bought 260 tonnes of fish of different kinds at VND6.6 billion (USD314,280) to supply restaurants during the Reunification Day and May Day holiday. However, due to the mass fish deaths, most of the fish remained unsold and the company decided to halt fish purchases.

However, following the call of local authorities, she received a VND18-billion loan from the Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development of Vietnam to buy an additional 400 tonnes of fish from fishermen. So, until now, the company's total frozen fish stocks stood at around 600 tonnes worth more than 24 billion dong.

She has now hired cold storage in HCM City, Nghe An and Haiphong to preserve 300 tonnes of fish and every month, she has to pay VND300 million for the fees along with another VND200 million for banking interest rates and salaries for workers.

Many other companies in Quang Binh are in the same situation. Currently, roughly 2,000 tonnes of frozen fish worth VND100 billion have been still keep in stores in the province, leading to serious losses.

According to companies in Quang Binh, they have been offered with a 20% price discount when buying fish from fishermen, while not yet been given with the six-month free interest rates for loans from banks as promised by local authorities.

Nguyen Thi Le, Deputy Director of An Binh Seafood Im-export Company in Bo Trach District, said that frozen fish has been stored for months, so whether they will get compensations if their fish is destroyed?

According to Le, the fish in stock should be destroyed so that companies can have empty stores to buy more fish from farmers.

Answering why companies have not yet been offered free interest rates from banks, Dinh Quang Hieu, director of the State Bank of Vietnam's branch in Quang Binh Province, said that procedures for getting loans from banks are related to many agencies, which has led to the tardiness. He has sent documents to urge local banks to speed up this work.