Shipping universally accounts for 80% of global trade and 70% in price terms. While in Vietnam, not only the maritime transport market share, especially with international goods, has decreased significantly but also the maritime transport volume of national fleet tends to decrease. Therefore, the solutions of increasing the transport volume along with regaining the transport market share are a major concern for Vietnam's shipping development plan. With the purpose of finding these important solutions, this research aims at investigating the factors affecting the national fleet’s transport volume by ARDL model based on Vietnamese fleet’s transport volume quarterly data from 2008 to 2022. The results demonstrate that the deadweight tonnage of the fleet and GDP are the two fundamental factors which have positive influences on transport volume of Vietnamese shipping fleet in both the short run and the long run. Then, the paper proposes solutions how these two variables, especially the tonnage of the fleet increase the maritime transport market share as well. The findings provide clear directions to the policy makers and the shipping company in proposing relevant solutions for shipping development plan.

It would appear that the diversification of the methods of international transport has made global trade much easier. With the outstanding advantages of cargo volumes, shipping costs and safety of goods, sea transport always accounts for a high proportion of the export and import activities of coastal countries. Today, therefore, seaborne trade is the main method of foreign trade in Vietnam and the world. Towards solutions in the area of seaborne trade development, this study aims to find the essential macroeconomics factors influencing directly seaborne trade by applying autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models with a case study of Vietnam. This paper finds that Vietnam’s GDP and FDI have positive impacts on Vietnam’s seaborne trade turnover in both the short run and long run. The findings here make a significant contribution to the search for practical scientific solutions to enhance Vietnam’s seaborne trade development.