Statistic reports are a millstone for Lower Austria’s forwarders

Not least because of the high non-wage labor costs, it is increasingly precarious for Lower Austrian freight forwarders to keep the headcount

The 368 resident forwarding companies in Lower Austria are currently fighting on several fronts. In addition to increasing bureaucracy, elaborate statistical reports and the excessively high non-wage costs, incalculable liability for the import duties, are aburden for the industry.

„Despite careful checking, we never know for some custom clearances, if we have to pay the import duties ourselves, instead of the customers. As freight forwarders we have neither insight nor influence whether the customer pay their taxes. If the customer does not pay, we will be liable. This regulation is simply an impertinence, and has to be amended quickly,“ says Alfred Wolfram, chairman of the Lower Austrian forwarders, to the newspaper NÖ Wirtschaftspressedienst. „In Germany and France, for example, forwarders are not liable,“ he adds:

Also the efforts for statistical reporting to Statistics Austria is worrying forwarders. „Each quarter we have to list all daily deliveries for a week in detail. This activity report is all well and good, but ultimately we do not know what happens with it,“ says Alfred Wolfram. The expenditure for this was enormously, given a driver makes 25 to 30 deliveries per day.

A further requirement of the chairman is the rapid reduction of non-wage labor costs. „In our industry, non-wage labor costs make up 60 to 70 per cent, and accordingly extremely high labor costs. Compared to our neighboring countries, we have not been competitive since quite a while,“ said Alfred Wolfram. Each employee would cost 1.7 times the gross salary. Compared to Eastern European competitor countries, this is almost twice as much.

„As the economy is not as flourishing as we would wish, we face more and more problems to keep the workforce. At the beginning of this year business was satisfactory, however, declining from mid-2014 due to Russian sanctions,“ said the chairman. Also, the coming year will not be easy, as the downward corrected economic data let expect. „Many shippers – in Austria around 1,700 companies – will have to realign their businesses,“ estimates Alfred Wolfram.

Wolfram emphatically calls for the expansion of logistics infrastructure. Since the opening of the Eastern European borders, the alignment of transports to South-Eastern Europe had been forced. Now apart from the expansion of the road, also the expansion of railway and the Danube waterway must be tackled. „We will not be able to meet the challenges of the next three decades, if we will not start soon to develop and also to use these transpoirt ways“, says the chairman of the economic chamber.

www.wko.at/noe/spediteure

www.wirtschaftspressedienst.com

Quelle: LogEastics
Portal: www.logistik-express.com