Honda Vietnam to Become Regional Centre for Spare Parts
Apart from its major target of providing high quality and safe products for customers, ‘I love Vietnam’ is an Honda Vietnam’s action programme to promote export and increase earnings in foreign currencies for Vietnam by raising the localisation proportion and getting involved in social and other activities. Reviewing one year’s implementation of the ‘I love Vietnam’ programme in Hanoi, Hiroshi Sekiguchi, general director of Honda Vietnam, said that with two major targets of quality and safety, ‘I love Vietnam’ was also a launching pad for Honda Vietnam to become a company that society wanted it to exist.
Increasing localisation and promoting export
Wishing to save foreign currencies for Vietnam via the replacement of imported goods, technology transfer and job creation for local workers, Honda Vietnam has promoted its localisation process, making a contribution to the development of the Vietnam’s motorbike industry. The first success in Honda Vietnam’s localisation process is to increase the number of local suppliers of spare parts, thus helping reduce expenditures in foreign currencies on importing motorbike details. The number of spare part suppliers has increased to 44 from 14 when Honda Vietnam made its first presence in Vietnam. By this September, all motorbikes manufactured by Honda Vietnam had had a high localisation proportion, at 80 per cent.
Nguyen Chien Thang, sales manager of Honda Vietnam, said that in preparation for Vietnam’s integration into the regional and world economies (ie, AFTA and WTO), Honda Vietnam had developed plans to seek markets for export. Since June, 2002, Honda Vietnam has become the first motorbike manufacturer in Vietnam to export its products. Among Wave motorbikes of the same kind made by different Honda companies in the region, such as Honda Thailand and Honda Indonesia, Wave Alpha made by Honda Vietnam was chosen by the Philippines as the product having globally high quality at a cost suitable to most customers. Thang said that by early 2004, Honda Vietnam had expanded its export markets to Laos and so far the company has exported 5,600 units to the market. In ten months of 2004 alone, Honda Vietnam exported around 46,000 motorbikes under the trademark of Wave Alpha to Laos and the Philippines, bringing total motorbikes exported by Honda Vietnam to 81,280 units. The warm welcome of the Wave Alpha in Laos and especially the Philippines, a country with a tough requirement for technical specifications means a great deal to the improvement of the image and position of Vietnamese mechanic products on the international arena and ASEAN in particular. With such an important achievement in export, Honda Vietnam has reached a turnover of US$43.5 million. The figure for the first ten months of this year alone was put at US$24 million. Accordingly, Honda Vietnam’s export turnover has seen a skyrocket increase with 325 per cent in 2003 against 2002, and 572 per cent in 2004 against 2002 and 176 per cent against 2003.
Apart from exporting motorbikes, Honda Vietnam has striven to become a major centre for supplying motorbike spare parts in the region. The company has exported spare parts since early 2003, mainly to Thailand, Laos and Malaysia. So far, Honda Vietnam has exported 737,000 motorbike spare part items, with 434,500 items exported in the first ten months of this year.
Honda Vietnam with high quality products
The major target for Honda Vietnam is to supply products with globally high quality at prices suitable with Vietnamese consumers. To that end, Honda Vietnam has invested in modern technologies and equipment. In the first ten months of this year, more than 427,000 customers chose products by Honda Vietnam. So far, after eight year’s operation in Vietnam, Honda Vietnam has served 1.7 million customers nationwide. This year is the sixth consecutive year Honda Vietnam’s products have been voted as Vietnam High quality goods.
Vietnamese
