Yesterday, PetroVietnam's international and legal relations chief, Vu Khanh Truong, said his company could cooperate with Gazprom in building a nitrogen fertilizer plant in Russia within the framework of the joint venture Gazpromviet.
Currently, only one nitrogen fertilizer plant, with production capacity of 740,000 metric tons a year, is operational in Vietnam. To satisfy growing demand, another 800,000 tons a year are needed.
Troika Dialog analysts say $800 million would be needed to build a plant with this capacity.
PetroVietnam representatives say the idea of building a fertilizer plant in Russia resulted from the absence of free nitrogen, the raw stock for fertilizers, in Vietnam, as the country consumes all the annual output of 7 billion cubic meters. Exploration of the Vietnamese continental shelf is underway for Vietgazprom, a joint venture by PetroVietnam and Gazprom. "By the fall, we should have completed the feasibility studies for the development of three blocks in the country's south," a source at Gazprom said.
In May, 2008 Gazprom and PetroVietnam signed an agreement to create Gazpromviet, a joint venture for oil and gas projects in Russia, the CIS, North Africa and Latin America. The 100% Gazprom-owned Zarubezhneftegaz confirmed that in June that a PetroVietnam delegation had held talks in Moscow on the creation of the joint venture.
"We are satisfied with our PetroVietnam partnership and look forward to an effective cooperation. The new company is being established primarily for oil and gas production, but other activities are also possible", said Ivan Gogolev, head of Zarubezhneftegaz public relations department.
Gazprom refused to comment.
Mikhail Stiskin of Troika Dialog pointed out that today's discussion featured many new projects for nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing. "These projects depend on whether Gazprom grants its Vietnamese partners access to its pipelines," the analyst added. "Not confirming the negotiations being held does not mean Gazprom is not interested in cooperation with a certain Vietnamese company."
The project could be carried out as a Russian-Vietnamese interstate partnership, Maxim Shein of BrokerCreditService added.
In May, the state-owned Zarubezhneft won a tender to develop four oil blocks estimated at 80 million metric tons in the Nenets Autonomous Area. The company established the Rusvietpetro joint venture to cooperate with PetroVietnam, which was the predetermined winner of the tender despite bids from Rosneft, TNK-BP and Surgutneftegaz. This agreement was a kind of exchange for the extension of another joint venture between the two companies, Vietsovpetro, which produces oil on the Vietnamese shelf, after 2010.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
PetroVietnam and Gazprom may build fertilizer plant
US drug enforcement agents train Vietnamese police
For a week and a half, a team of DEA agents and US military medics have shown 80 Vietnamese police, customs officials and border guards the American way to conduct a drug raid: planning, entry and arrest techniques, self-defence and emergency medical care.
Communist Vietnam now has close diplomatic and trade relations with the United States, its enemy during the Vietnam War, and the country's Ministry of Public Security seems happy to accept American help in fighting the narcotics trade.
"The drugs problem is an international problem," said Joe Boix, a square-jawed DEA firearms instructor from Phoenix, Arizona, who was leading the training. "It's all the same no matter where you go."
Vietnam is a waypoint on international narcotics-smuggling routes and has a serious heroin problem with the number of addicts particularly high in its north-west, where heroin is smuggled in from neighbouring Laos.
Inside Vietnam itself, opium poppies, once grown widely, were stamped out by the government in the 1990s, according to the UN, but Laos produces a small amount of opiates each year, and nearby Burma is the world's number two producer of heroin, after Afghanistan.
In recent years, Vietnamese drug users have branched out from using heroin to ecstasy and methamphetamine although authorities said none of these synthetic drugs were produced in Vietnam.
Authorities reported record drug busts, with the Cong An Nhan Dan, or People's Police, newspaper claiming police had seized 83 kilograms of heroin and 89,000 amphetamine pills so far this year.
In the past two months, six women have been arrested in Vietnamese airports smuggling heroin to or from Australia. In May, four Chinese men and an Indonesian were caught trying to cross into China with 9 tons of hashish hidden in a shipping container full of jeans.
"Our main thrust is to go after the international organizations," said Jeff Wanner, the DEA's liaison officer in Hanoi. "This training is to help [the Vietnamese] deal with their internal problem, but we want to go after the bigger organizations, international in scope."
The DEA office in Vietnam is not permitted to carry out hands-on operations, but Wanner said the office exchanges intelligence on drug activity with Vietnamese agencies.
The training in Hanoi was very hands-on. In classrooms belonging to a firefighting academy, DEA agents ran through physical arrest exercises with Vietnamese officers, forcing "suspects" to lie on their stomachs, handcuffing them, then moving them to a squatting position and pushing them to their feet.
Captain Luu Duoc Cuong, a border guard from the northern province of Cao Bang, said the techniques were similar to Vietnamese ones but with a few differences.
"In America, once the suspect has surrendered, if he begins to resist, to be difficult or doesn't listen, you can shoot him," Cuong said. "In Vietnam, if he's surrendered but doesn't listen, you still can't shoot."
In the parking lot, where a plywood mock-up of a house was constructed, Boix coached teams of Vietnamese agents in forcibly entering the house and then, one by one, clearing each room and arresting suspects.
"Slice the pie!" Boix called out, using a term that refers to the way a pair of agents, standing at the corners of a door, visually divide the room inside as they scan for targets.
Two agents drew their guns on a colleague role-playing a suspect, shouting in Vietnamese, while an interpreter translated for Boix's benefit: "Police! Hands up!"
A moment later, shots rang out. Paint pellets splattered on plywood walls.
Some minutes later, Boix reviewed the raid with his students.
"In the first incident, there were two misses in very close proximity," Boix said. "We must make every shot count, so no one is injured unnecessarily and we go home safe to our families."
"It's exciting for them to be able to actually pull the trigger and try to pretend like there are bad guys coming at them," Wanner said. "This is what we all trained for."
Vietnam to triple car registration tax-dealers
HANOI, July 30 (Reuters) - Vietnam will raise car registration taxes from next month to up to 15 percent, from 5 percent now, in an effort to reduce traffic congestion and fuel consumption, dealers said on Wednesday.
They said the increase in taxes, approved on Tuesday, would be effective from August 14 for passenger vehicles with less than 10 seats.
State media reported Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed the decision to raise the tax on Tuesday.
The government was contemplating raising special consumption taxes on cars with a capacity of 3 litres and more to 60 or 70 percent, from the current level of 50 percent, dealers said.
Car sales in Vietnam nearly triped in the first half of this year from the same period last year, the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association said earlier this month.
Vietnam has already raised tariffs on imported cars to 83 percent from 70 percent previously.
Car imports in the first seven months surged nearly 200 percent to $1.83 billion, with the volume of fully assembled vehicles jumping more than 265 percent to 43,500 units, government figures show.
Vietnam hikes car tax to reduce traffic congestion
The decision bumps up the fee for vehicles with less than 10 seats to 10 percent to 15 percent of the purchase price, depending on the area, the online newspaper VnExpress said. The current registration fee is 5 percent of a vehicle's sales price.
The newspaper quoted the decree, signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, as saying the move aims to further restrict new car registrations, thus reducing traffic congestion in big cities.
Auto sales have surged in
Auto dealers feared the new decision would hurt sales, which have been slowing recently due to increased fuel prices, soaring inflation and a slumping world economy.
"
Anh said new cars purchased in July at his dealership were down 50 percent to 60 percent, compared with two to three months ago. He said the new registration fees will further impinge on sales.
The Ministry of Finance is also considering raising import taxes for cars in a bid to cut a record trade deficit, which stood at US$15 billion in the first seven months. In April, the government raised the car import tax to 83 percent from 70 percent.
There are an estimated 1.2 million cars in the country of 86 million people.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Vietnam, US cooperate in IT education
| 10:55' 29/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
VietNamNet Bridge – The Vietnam Software Engineering Group (SEG Vietnam), a cooperative between Vietnamese and US universities, is preparing to launch its first IT course this October. Vietnam now has 18,000 students in 93 universities, 156 colleges and 60 training centres studying information technology. (Source: VNA) |
Nucleus Software Forays into Vietnam
Prudential Vietnam Finance Company Ltd. is one of the leading international financial services companies in
Prudential Finance chose Nucleus' flagship product - FinnOne suite - to provide support on customer acquisition, lending & collections for consumer loans. FinnOne TM will enable Prudential Finance to support a differentiated customer experience through innovative product offerings, and seamless integration across channels for greater customer convenience. The system will allow the business to integrate the different touch-points in its supply chain for acquisition prospecting, pre-disbursal processing and loan booking.
Commenting on the selection, Kalidas Ghose, CEO of Prudential Finance, said, "Nucleus' track record and comprehensive portfolio of products will be a valued addition to our consumer finance operations. We are happy to partner with Nucleus in the dynamic
Vishnu R. Dusad, CEO & Managing Director, Nucleus Software Exports Limited, said, "We are proud to be associated with a prestigious client like Prudential Finance. This development is significant to us as it comes at a stage when there is an economic boom in
Foreign investment in Vietnam surges to $44.5 bln
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It brought the figures for the first seven months to 654 projects and nearly $44.5 billion, according to the department, which is part of the Ministry of Planning and Investment. The biggest project this year is a $4.3 billion investment to develop an urban area in Phu Yen Province by Brunei’s New City Group. It was followed by a $3.8 billion oil refinery in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province and a $3.5 billion university complex in Ho Chi Minh City by Malaysia’s Berjaya Leisure Company. Taiwan continued to rank first with an investment of $8.4 billion, followed by Japan with $7.2 billion, Malaysia with $5.07 billion, Brunei with $4.3 billion, Canada with $4.2 billion and Singapore with $4.02 billion. This year foreign-invested enterprises have hired 16,000 new employees, a year-on-year growth of 15.2 percent. Source: TN, VNA | |||||||
Looting causes huge financial losses in southern industrial zones
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The theft epitomizes the rampant problem plaguing industrial zones in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, as brazen looting has caused losses of billions of dong for companies. Earlier last Thursday, guards at Posco Vietnam Company in Phu My 1 Industrial Zone found a group of workers leaving work with steel pieces hidden under their clothing. The total weight of the discovered steel was around 50 kilograms. An official from the company said workers often stole steel pieces from its construction sites to sell as metal scraps. Guards have discovered thefts almost daily, with lost quantities amounting to 50 to 200 kilograms per day, the official said. “There are more than 20 sites that buy scrap metal that have been established near the industrial zone entrance in the last five years,” said Posco Vietnam’s Chief Administrative Officer Kil Soo Kang. “Many workers go there to sell stolen steel after work.” Kang said on June 10, around 80 workers had attacked the company’s guards to avenge a previously foiled theft. In another attack, seven guards were hospitalized and a sentry-box was seriously damaged. In May, a truck carrying steel from a factory belonging to the Southern Steel Corporation in Phu My 1 Industrial Zone was discovered with 20 tons of stolen construction steel. Ba Ria-Vung Tau police investigated the case and found the factory’s storekeeper Pham Thanh Lam had colluded with the driver and a guard to take the steel. Baconco Fertilizer Company in Phu My 1 Industrial Zone also said they have lost up to 1,300 tons of fertilizer per month recently. In Dong Xuyen Industrial Zone, Izico Company has reported 40 cases of theft, while looting has also transpired at other industrial zones, including My Xuan A2 and My Xuan B1. An official from the provincial police’s investigation department said the thefts have adversely impacted the investment environment in the province and the quality of construction works. He blamed most of the lootings on lax recruitment of guards by companies, adding that some guards had colluded with workers in the operations. Many companies recruit guards for temporary work without a contract, the official said. “Companies should recruit qualified guards. Moreover, industrial zones should set up more police stations to deal with the issue.” Reported by Nguyen Long | |||||||
Monday, July 28, 2008
Walking Vietnam's Capital, in Search of Serenity
July 25, 2008
With its mix of French-colonial heritage, old streets, lakes and tree-lined boulevards, Hanoi is one of Asia's most beautiful cities.
Exploring Vietnam's capital by foot can be, well, a feat. Pavements are often blocked by parked motorbikes and stalls, turning a casual stroll into an obstacle course. The constant wall of noise made by countless motorbikes and honking horns can be exhausting. Street vendors trying to sell you everything from postcards to fruit may test your patience. And your greatest challenge may be just to get across Hanoi's busy streets alive.
But there are ways to discover quieter avenues amid that mayhem. Here is a leisurely walk from the city's elegant French area to the quaint streets of Hanoi's old quarter that includes some stops for shopping along the way.
![[Hanoi map]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BX384_citywa_20080724130130.jpg) |
| Anne Smith |
8:30 A.M. AU LAC CAFE
If a bowl of pho, a rice noodle soup, at a street stall isn't your idea of a perfect breakfast, then start your day at Au Lac Cafe (57 Ly Thai To St., 84-4-825-7807). The cozy French eatery in the courtyard of a large French villa is known for the best coffee in town and is a favorite with both locals and long-term foreign residents. If it is too hot or rainy, walk to Paris Deli (6 Phan Chu Trinh St., 84-4-934-5269), an indoor cafe in another colonial villa that also serves French breakfast favorites such as croissants and baguettes.
9:30 A.M. TRANG TIEN STREET
Walk a few meters along Ly Thai To Street until you reach the Hanoi Opera House, built by the French at the beginning of the 20th century. It was modeled -- on a smaller scale -- after the Opéra National de Paris (also known as Palais Garnier) and completed in 1911. By the second half of the 20th century, however, the building was in disrepair. It was closed in the early 1990s, but reopened in 1997, after a three-year renovation. It is now a venue for performing arts, including opera, dance, music and theater, as well as conferences and corporate events. Visitors can check on performance schedules in the English-language daily Vietnam News or the Web site hanoigrapevine.com.
![[See photos]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BX326_hanoi__20080724111246.jpg)
From the opera house, head toward Trang Tien Street, which looks like the slightly run-down main street of a 19th-century small French town. Most of the off-white and yellow-painted buildings are no more than three stories high and have shops on the ground floor. Some sport Art Deco-style wrought-iron balconies, facades that are decorated with columns and other ornaments, and elegant French-style wooden shutters. A few houses still have French writing on the walls -- alimentation (foodstuffs), for example, or ameublement (furnishings) -- indicating what was sold there when the French were in town.
You can find bookshops, ice-cream parlors and stores selling handicrafts and embroidered table linen here. But most visitors come for the art galleries. Worth checking out are Hanoi Studio (13 Trang Tien St., 84-4-936-0364), Green Palm Gallery (15 Trang Tien St., 84-4-936-4757) and Thanh Binh Gallery (25-27 Trang Tien St., 84-4-825-1532). Life Photo Gallery (39 Trang Tien St., 84-4-936-3886) sells beautiful photos of Hanoi as well as portraits of Vietnam's ethnic minorities.
Art has become big business in Vietnam, and the price of works by better-known artists such as Nguyen Thanh Binh, famous for his paintings of girls dressed in white áo dàis, the Vietnamese national dress, and Le Thiet Cuong, who paints minimalist rural scenes, have skyrocketed since the first commercial art galleries in Hanoi opened in the early 1990s. (A 130 cm x 150 cm canvas by Le Thiet Cuong costs about $5,000 in Hanoi today.) Driven by the commercial success of certain painters, most of Hanoi's galleries exhibit similar-looking works of art.
To find more edgy art, such as works by Nguyen Minh Thanh or painters Dinh Thi Tham Poong and Dinh Y Nhi, all of whom have had exhibitions around the world and are gaining a following among some collectors in Asia, take a taxi to Art Vietnam gallery, owned by American Suzanne Lecht (7 Nguyen Khac Nhu St., 84-4-927-2349). Another gallery is Studio Tho at 78 Ma May St. ( 84-4-240-9877). Take a look at the Web site hanoigrapevine.com for the latest exhibitions and other cultural events in Hanoi.
10:30 A.M. SOFITEL METROPOLE HOTEL
From Trang Tien Street, turn right into Ngo Quyen Street to admire one of Asia's most beautiful historic hotels: the Sofitel Metropole with its trademark green shutters and classic white facade.
In colonial times, it was known as the Metropole Hotel, the finest hotel in French Indochina. Following the Vietnam War -- the Vietnamese call it the American War -- the hotel fell into disrepair. At the beginning of the 1990s, the French hotel management group Accor agreed to renovate and manage the hotel and in 1992, it was reopened in its current splendor as the Sofitel Metropole.
Across the street are more examples of elegant French colonial architecture, such as the former residence of the French governor of Tonkin, the historical name for northern Vietnam. Today, the stunning, large building with its cream-colored facade, wrought-iron fence and Art Deco entrance canopy serves as Vietnam's government guesthouse.
11 A.M. HOAN KIEM LAKE
Return to Trang Tien Street and at the end, cross the road to get to Hoan Kiem Lake, which means "lake of the returned sword." According to legend, Emperor Le Loi, who reigned in the so-called Later Le dynasty of the 15th century, used a magical sword to drive out the (Ming dynasty) Chinese. After his victory, he returned the blade to a giant golden turtle living in the depths of the lake. The tiny Tortoise Pagoda on an islet in the middle of Hoan Kiem was built to commemorate this event and is now often used as a symbol of the city.
Walk a few meters along the southwestern shore of the lake until you spot Hapro Cafe, a tree-shaded, open-air cafe.
With its huge parasols that are grouped around a round kiosk, the cafe is easy to spot. It's a little oasis in the hustle and bustle of Hanoi and a great place to people-watch. Locals love to come to the lake for a stroll or a chat, to practice tai chi or play badminton in the early morning. Hapro Cafe serves many kinds of coffee and fruit juices, including fresh coconut juice, ice cream, cakes and other snacks.
11:30 A.M. SHOPPING IN THE
CATHEDRAL AREA
From Hapro Cafe, cross to the other side of Le Thai To Street and walk for a few minutes along the lakeside boulevard lined with low colonial buildings.
Turn left onto Hang Trong Street and then left on Nha Tho Street, which means Church Street; St. Joseph's Cathedral sits at the end of the small road. The Catholic church, with its gray facade and square twin towers, was built by the French in 1886 and still holds regular masses.
In recent years, Nha Tho Street and its adjacent roads -- Hang Trong Street, Nha Chung Street and Au Trieu Street -- have become a shopping mecca. You will find lacquerware and colorful Vietnamese lanterns and lampshades, Asian home décor stores as well as a great number of shops selling Vietnamese handicrafts, hand-embroidered bed linen and quilts, and trendy fashion items.
For a special souvenir from Vietnam, go to the shop named P (8 Nha Chung St., 84-4-928- 6588) or Hanoi Gallery (17 Nha Chung St., 84-4-928-7943). Both stores specialize in propaganda posters, many of which are hand-painted and are said to date from the time of the Vietnam War.
Nha Tho Street has a number of pleasant international restaurants. For Italian food, go to Mediterraneo (23 Nha Tho St., 84-4-826-6288), for Spanish fare to La Salsa (25 Nha Tho St., 84-4-828-9052). Cafe Moca, an old Hanoian favorite, serves Vietnamese and international dishes (14-16 Nha Tho St., 84-4-825-6334). All are great places where you can have lunch and soak up Hanoi's vibrant street life. Watch women with conical hats balance bamboo poles with heavy loads on their shoulders, vendors sell fruit from the back of their bicycles or the city's few remaining cyclos -- Vietnam's traditional bicycle rickshaws -- go by.
For an excellent after-lunch coffee, go for the modern ambience of Highlands Coffee (6 Nha Tho St.), Vietnam's answer to Starbucks.
2:30 P.M. THE OLD QUARTER
As you face St. Joseph's Cathedral, you'll see Ly Quoc Su Street on your right. Take it until you reach the very busy Hang Gai Street, which turns into Hang Bong Street as you walk westward. You are now entering the city's Old Quarter with its labyrinth of narrow lanes and colorful, frenetic street life. For many, this area represents the true soul of Hanoi. Each of the neighborhood's 36 streets used to be dedicated to a product or trade, and many of them still are.
There was a time when most of the stores on Hang Gai Street sold hemp and ropes, but it is now mainly known for its great number of silk shops. This area, especially along Hang Bong and Hang Gai streets, also has a large concentration of art galleries. Paintings range from several hundred to several thousand dollars.
At the beginning of Hang Gai Street, turn onto tiny To Tich Street, which offers an array of products also found in the area around the cathedral -- often at a much lower price. At the end of your shopping trip, put down your bags, sit down with the locals on tiny plastic chairs in front of small shops along the street and enjoy a glass of juice or yogurt with fresh fruit salad.
3:30 P.M. "HANOI HILTON"
Thus refreshed, you might be up for a glimpse of Vietnam's more recent history -- a visit to Hoa Lo prison, better known in the West as the "Hanoi Hilton." The cynical name was given to it by American prisoners of war who were detained here -- among them Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain, who spent five-and-a-half years in the prison. You will need a taxi to get there (1 Hoa Lo St., 84-4-824-6358); it's a 10-minute ride.
A small part of the prison, which was built by the French in the 1880s, is now a museum. The rest was torn down in the 1990s to make way for a luxury hotel and office complex. The museum focuses mostly on the brutal mistreatment of Vietnamese inmates during the French colonial rule. A section of the museum also is dedicated to the several hundred American servicemen who were incarcerated here during the Vietnam War. Prisoners from that time, including Mr. McCain, have said they were tortured and that living conditions were miserable. None of this is mentioned in the museum. On the contrary -- displays claim that the Americans were treated well, and photos show seemingly healthy prisoners playing sports and celebrating Christmas.
--Claudia Blume is a Hong Kong-based writer.
Indochina Capital CEO pleased with Vietnam’s business environment
| 15:09' 26/07/2008 (GMT+7) |
VietNamNet Bridge – Peter R. Ryder, CEO and General Director of the Indochina Capital group, an US investor with big investment projects in Vietnam, was received by President Nguyen Minh Triet on July 25. |
Thousands on strike at South Korean footwear plant in Vietnam
The workers of Hwa Seung Vina in southern Dong Nai province stopped work Saturday, asking company leaders to raise their incomes by at least 300,000 dong (18 dollars), said Tuoi Tre daily newspaper.
The management of the company which produces shoes for export, offered to raise workers' salary by 200,000 dong (12 dollars) but the compromise did not work, the paper said.
Company and provincial labour officials could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Communist Vietnam is now fighting spiralling inflation, with consumer price rises topping 27 percent year-on-year in July. The country last week surprisingly raised petroleum prices by 30 percent.
Strong FDI ‘sign of confidence’ in Vung Tau Vietnam
(26-07-2008)
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| Workers assemble car engines at a Japanese-invested automobile factory. Foreign direct investment in the first seven months of this year hit a record high, double the figure for all of 2007. —VNS Photo |
HA NOI — The country attracted US$45.28 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first seven months of the year, double the figure for all of 2007, according to a report by the Foreign Investment Agency.
The increase in FDI registered countered the negative perception of the Vietnamese economy, strongly expressing the confidence of foreign investors in the country’s investment climate, the report stated.
The agency also attributed the FDI growth to ongoing Government efforts, as relevant ministries and agencies promote investment and support investors seeking investment opportunities and implementing projects.
As many as 167 foreign-invested projects worth over $13.55 billion received licences in July, with an average capital of $68 million each, the highest level to date. The latest addition has brought the total number of licensed projects in the country so far this year to 654, capitalised at over $44.49 billion.
The figure reflects a decline of 24 per cent in the number of projects, but marks a 5.5 fold increase in the amount of investment capital.
The period also saw 188 projects raise their levels of investment capital by a combined $788.6 million, the report noted.
Major projects that contributed to the rise in FDI included the Taiwan group Formosa’s $7.9 billion steel complex in Ha Tinh Province’s Vung Ang Economic Zone, a $6.2 billion refinery project at Nghi Son Economic Zone in Thanh Hoa Province (a joint venture of Japanese, Kuwaiti and Vietnamese partners) and the $4.2 billion Ho Tram Tourism complex project financed by Canadian investors in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.
The previous trend of the majority of FDI going into the services sector continued, accounting for $22.84 billion, or 51 per cent, of total FDI for the period. Another $21.45 billion or 48 per cent of total FDI went into industrial and construction sectors, while the rest was in agro-forestry-fishery sectors.
Taiwan remained the top foreign investor in Viet Nam with 82 projects worth $8.4 billion. Japan came in second with 65 projects valued at $7.2 billion, and Malaysia was third with 28 projects capitalised at over $5 billion.
In the first seven months, FDI was mostly transferred out of Ha Noi and HCM City, the nation’s major economic hubs, to neighbouring provinces as the two cities were unable to provide large land areas for development. Ba Ria – Vung Tau has become the most attractive locality for foreign investors, bringing in 21 per cent of total registered capital. HCM City and the central Ha Tinh Province were next at 18 per cent, and Thanh Hoa followed at 14 per cent. — VNS
Vietnam's gem, gold and jewelery exports rise
(26-07-2008)
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| Customers browse gold jewellery at a shop on Dinh Tien Hoang Street. Gem, gold and jewellery exports in July reached $255 million, double the figure of the first half of the year. — VNS Photo Truong Vi |
HA NOI — Gem, gold and jewellery exports in July jumped to US$255 million, double the figure of the first half of the year, according to statistics from the General Statistics Office (GSO).
The GSO reported that the results helped lift the country’s commodity exports in the first seven months of the year to $607 million, six times higher than the same period last year.
Previously, the Government has not allowed the export of gold, only gold jewellery. Every year, domestic firms export roughly $30-40 million worth of jewellery to markets, including the United States, France and Germany.
However, director of the Agricultural Bank’s Gold Trading Company, Nguyen Thanh Truc, said last month that several gold businesses were licensed to export gold at roughly 1-1.5 tonnes each.
With the regulation banning gold exports, the imported gold was kept inside the country, particularly in residences, banks and gold shops. This was believed to partly lift the country’s trade deficit.
Up to 95 per cent of gold consumed in Viet Nam is imported yearly. The country in the first five months of the year imported roughly 40 tonnes of gold.
Therefore, with gold exports, experts expect the country can reduce its trade deficit, which hit $15 billion in the first seven months of the year.
Thanks to the gold export regulation, Truc said the Agricultural Bank’s Gold Trading Company had so far earned an export turnover of $30 million, of which $16 million came from gold exports.
To boost exports of the gem and gold industry, the Viet Nam Gold Trading Association said the industry should focus on developing a brand name and acquiring modern technology to increase the export of jewellery. — VNS
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Vietnam's $1.2 Billion Software Park to begin construction
Published on July 23, 2008
While Thai political leaders are preoccupied with political survival, our neighbours have moved ahead with their economic development.
Vietnam recently announced construction of the US$1.2 billion (Bt40 billion) Thu Thiem Software Park had begun. Vietnam claims that once completed, it will be the biggest software park in Southeast Asia.
The software park is part of Vietnam's plan to promote economic development by bringing in IT technicians and highly-skilled staff with expertise in software production and microchip design. The project will also have a training centre to develop human resources and provide a skilled workforce from tenants. The park is a sensible step for Vietnam in its move up the technological ladder. Over the past couple of years, Vietnam has managed to catch up with Thailand in terms of industrial development and exports.
Vietnam News reported that when the park - designed to be the biggest of its kind in Asean - becomes operational, it will attract an additional $2.95 billion in foreign direct investment, contribute $4.3 billion in taxes, and create $6.5 billion in annual revenue. The park is expected to create 40,000 new jobs during the construction period and 70,000 jobs for software specialists and IT engineers. The park will contribute significantly to the structural shift towards service-sector development.
This should prompt Thailand to look at its current economic development. Over the past couple of years, governments have shown no clear direction for future development. And the domestic political situation is not solely to blame. In fact, in spite of calls from the private sector for the government to improve the quality of the workforce, no concrete measures or projects have been executed. Instead, over the past several years, Thai governments have announced only short-term political measures to maintain their grip on power.
The latest project in Vietnam should serve as a serious warning that Thailand cannot be complacent if it wants to maintain growth and compete in the global economy.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Vietnam gloom forces SME rethink
Oh Boon Ping in Singapore
The fortunes of a number of Singaporean small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been affected by adverse economic developments in Vietnam, and some are taking steps to cut their exposure to the market.
A check with a number of small firms shows that they have sought to either diversify their income stream or shift their focus to higher value-added industries to cushion any impact from any economic slowdown.
The banking group HSBC told Business Times that the number of Singapore firms that had inquired about ways to mitigate their exposure to Vietnam has leapt tenfold in the past few weeks.
This came as Vietnam's inflation number hit a high of 25.2% in May this year, triggering strikes and labour disputes, while the Vietnamese dong also weakened significantly against major currencies.
Motley Resources, which sells semi-processed agro-commodities, said its exports of cashew nuts to Vietnam have fallen to 50% of its supply from West Africa - down from 75% - since the advent of the credit crunch and adverse developments in Vietnam.
As a result, its managing director Bipin Jha said, the firm had to try selling the excess products to "alternative customers in India and allow our customers to, and help the Vietnamese customer secure different types of letter of credit to reduce the high interest burden".
The chemical exporter Asia Polyurethane (APU) said it had shelved a planned US$3 million investment early this year due to the worsening economic conditions both in Vietnam and in other parts of the world.
Said chief executive Erman Tan: "We are putting the planned investment on hold so that we can further evaluate the economic conditions."
Even though the firm currently does not sell directly to Vietnam, it said it would price its products "in an internationally accepted currency when doing businesses with Vietnamese partners. This avoids the forex losses from a weaker dong".
According to Pan Asian Water Solutions, the Vietnamese government is expected to cut back on various non-essential developmental projects due to rising construction costs and higher interest rates. However, the water piping specialist does not expect demand for water infrastructure projects to be affected.
Meanwhile, AP Oil International, a lubricant and chemical specialist, said it will continue with its business plans there.
Its CEO Ho Leng Woon said that the "environment for industrial growth is still very conducive" while inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Vietnam continued to be strong.
For example, FDI in first half of 2008 amounted to US$31.6 billion, representing 370% increase compared to that of the same period in 2007.
"The falling dong may, in fact, reduce operational costs. Even if temporary wage increases have to be paid out to placate a disgruntled workforce, manpower costs are still very attractive."
In fact, AP Oil has just established a new joint stock company, AP Saigon Petro JSC, with state-owned oil company, as it continues to see opportunities there.
Mr Ho added that the weaker currency should not be a deterrent to firms with "solid plans to invest in Vietnam", as the cost of investment is now lower, in Sing-dollar terms.
According to Jonathan Speight, HSBC Singapore's head of trade and supply chains, "if you invest in Vietnam you have to be in it for the long haul. Vietnam is not for people looking to make a quick buck and get out".
"While the economy is feeling some strains at the moment, Vietnam is still an opportunity for Singapore business people with patience and vision."
Specifically, there are significant opportunities for retail and service companies, while "manufacturers that need access to an affordable and skilful workforce and those wishing to benefit from what we expect to be one of the fastest-growing economies in the world over at least the next 10-15 years should take a look at Vietnam".
To mitigate the impact from Vietnam, Pan Asian Water Solutions said it would be more selective in taking on new projects "and only go for projects where funding is secured directly by the Vietnamese government or established international financial institutions such as the World Bank", said its managing director and CEO Francis Koh.
Motley Resources does not expect a worsening of the situation in Vietnam, but said: "If the current situation continues for more than six to eight months, we may need to diversify our product mix to hedge against the downturn."
Standard Chartered advised SMEs here to consider factors such as whether the business's cash-flow situation "is adequate to compete with a competitor that may have deeper pockets".
"Also, does your business have the right mix of management skills to drive the expansion? SMEs should also ask themselves if they are ready to embrace a different culture," said a spokesman. "We also advise customers to identify a trustworthy overseas partner when planning for overseas expansion."
Published in Business Times (Singapore) on July 15, 2008
Vietnam to set up oil and gas university
| 09:03' 19/07/2008 (GMT+7) |
VietNamNet Bridge - The Prime Minister on July 17 approved in principle a project to set up an oil and gas university in the northern mountainous province of Hoa Binh . (Source: VNA) |
Annual largest info tech expo kicks off in HCM City
| 10:44' 17/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
International Data Group chairman Patrick Govern isits the exhibition The event, which is the country’s annual biggest information technology exhibition, is staged at the HCMC International Exhibition and Convention Center in Tan Binh District until July 19. More than 200 exhibitors are present to showcase their latest products, services and technologies. International names include Canon, Asus, Gigabyte, Samsung, Intel, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi, LG, Fujifilm, JVC, Acer, Olympus, Brother, Lenovo, and AOC, while some popular Vietnamese companies are FPT, VinaGame, VTC, Robo, THT and CMS. Government leaders, policymakers and industry professionals are scheduled to meet and discuss technology development trends, said the organizers, which are IDG, the Hochiminh Computer Association, and Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This year, besides the showcase as usual, many other IT-related activities are being carried out during the event. On July 16, the PC World Viet Nam magazine is to announce the “Best IT product 2008” award, which is based on the magazine’s voters for IT products and services available on the market. An IDG forecast says Viet Nam’s IT spending this year is estimated at about US$2 billion (including hardware, software and services), up 15% on last year. The Vietnamese ICT market is believed to continue to develop sustainably due to this spending. Between now and 2010, the number of digital products used in the nation will increase by more than 10%, and the growth rate in the audio and video products is 5-6%, according to a forecast by the Viet Nam Electronic Industries Association. The Viet Nam ICT Outlook 2008 conference took place in HCMC Tuesday. Mr. Le Truong Tung, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Computer Association, said the nation’s knowledge index and knowledge economy index have improved this year. The indexes were below 3.0 points last year and are higher than 3.0 points this year. A report by the association says Viet Nam has upgraded its position on the global ICT map. Also Tuesday, the HCMC Investment and Trade Promotion Center inaugurated an ICT showroom in District 1 as part of the Viet Nam ICT Outlook 2008. |
Traveling on the East-West Economic Corridor
| 14:43' 17/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
VietNamNet Bridge – The East-West Economic Corridor, in reality a 1,450-kilonieter-long road, connects Danang City in Vietnam with large cities of Laos and Thailand. The corridor has potentials in historical, cultural, and ecological tourism. Nowadays, a traveler has only to buy a packaged tour along the corridor to explore natural beauties of many countries, or even design a trip by himself. A view of Mukdahan City in Thailand. ( www.thaiwebsites.com) It takes only 15 minutes to finish procedures for entering Laos with just VND20,000 for a tourist and VND5,000 for a trader. Then, they are already on the way to Savanakhet, the second largest province of the neighboring country after Vientiane Capital. Along the way are forests of many old trees and green rice fields, giving passengers cool and fresh feelings quite different from the hot climate in the summer. Some peaceful villages with traditional stilt houses come in sight along the road. The bus arrives in Savanakhet Province late in the afternoon. This is one of six busiest commercial localities along the corridor besides Mawlamyine in Myanmar, Phitsanulok and Khon Kaen in Thailand, and Hue and Danang in Vietnam. A Vietnamese resident there says that locals there have benefited much more in business from the corridor. "A direct airline from Savanakhet to Bangkok will be launched soon, and hopefully an air route from Savanakhet to Vietnam will also be opened soon after," says the resident. From the province, travelers could see crowded streets of the Mukdahan City in Thailand beyond a river and easily enter the Buddhist country through the Mukdahan Border Gate. There are many hopping centers in the city with all kinds of products such as building materials, clothes, and souvenirs. Tourists will also be pleased with accommodation services with many hotels costing just US$10-30 a room each night. After taking a rest, travelers will take time for their own pleasure, possibly by taking a walk around peaceful streets, watching twilight landscapes on the Mekong Rever, or traveling on a tuktuk three-wheeled taxi. In addition, some local specialties like grilled chicken, sticky rice, or Mekong fish will wash away their tiredness after a long journey. In the following morning, tourists can still prolong their trip to other attractions in Thailand such as Bankok, Pattaya, and Phuket. The SK Tourism Co. has arranged caravan tours with the itinerary from Singapore, through Malaysia, Thailand, Laos to Vietnam since 1994. Visitors can contact the company's Vietnamese partner named Hoian Travel at 10 Tran Hung Dao Street, Hoi An City, Quang Nam Province, telephone: (0510) 910911, website: www.hoiantravel.com |
Vietnam to boost China highway links
The new "economic corridor" is part of an emerging web of road links, many part-funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), connecting China and regional countries that also include Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has signed off on a plan for a 1.4 billion dollar six-lane expressway from Hanoi to the border town of Lang Son, to connect with a road to Nanning in China's Guangxi province.
The plan -- part of the Chinese-Vietnamese so-called "two corridors, one economic belt" initiative agreed in 2005 -- was announced on the official Vietnamese government website and in state media.
Vietnam, with ADB funding, is already upgrading its Hanoi road and rail links to the northwestern border town of Lao Cai, to speed up the flow of goods and people to Kunming in southern China's Yunnan province.
It also plans to build up its main northern deep-sea container port of Haiphong to boost annual capacity to 25 million tonnes by 2010 and 40 million tonnes by 2020, said the official government website.
Work is set to begin this year on a 1.2 million dollar six-lane expressway between Hanoi and Haiphong, which was announced in previous plans.
Another 114-kilometre road will link the capital's Noi Bai International Airport with the northern harbour of Halong City, the official website said.
The plans signal that Vietnam and China have put economic ties ahead of their troubled past -- which included a millennium of Chinese rule of Vietnam followed by more invasions and independence wars through the centuries.
The two countries fought their last border war in 1979. A territorial dispute still simmers about the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, and the land border has yet to be fully demarcated.
Despite their past, both countries now hope closer economic integration will provide southern China with alternative sea access routes while boosting economic development in Vietnam's poor mountainous north.
Under the newly announced plans, both countries will have three international border points, four other border gates, 13 joint border markets and an economic cooperation zone at Lang Son in Vietnam.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Vietnam seizes nearly 4 tons of bullets
Nguyen Van Thuong of the provincial coast guard command said Monday that coast guards intercepted a fishing boat off the coast of Binh Thuan province over the weekend.
Thuong says the six fishermen told authorities that they found the bullets off the coast and intended to sell them for scrap metal. He says the rusty bullets will be handed over to the military for disposal.
Viet Nam’s Indy Jones hunts for treasure
|
(20-07-2008)
by Du Van Nga
From trekking through the deep jungle to facing storms and floods, Phan Chanh Tam has been through it all in search of hidden treasures.
The treasures he seeks, however, weren’t abandoned by pirates long ago and there are no maps to discern or riddles to solve. Nature itself is both the source and the obstacle Tam has faced as a geologist who has scoured the nation in search of hidden gems.
"In a real gem collector’s mind, it’s not the price of the gem that assigns its value, but its scarcity," said Tam, as he sits in his gallery in HCM City, surrounded by a collection of gems worth nothing less than US$10 million. "While diamonds may be the most expensive, locally found coloured gems have seduced many American and Asian collectors. We are so lucky to have such national treasures, we have to conserve them carefully."
Tam hasn’t always been so appreciative, or so knowledgeable, about the hidden gems Viet Nam holds. Originally a soldier, Tam left the ranks to study under his uncle Le Van Sam, a gem craftsman.
From his uncle he inherited a passion for gems and entered into a field not much less dangerous than his time as a soldier. Tramping deep into the jungle in challenging conditions, Tam spent 12 years looking for gems, paying for his work with 100 taels of gold mostly borrowed from family and friends.
As he carried on his work, his expertise and knowledge developed. On one of his many trips he was travelling with a delegation when they spotted what appeared to be a rock on the side of the road. While he was told that the rock wasn’t anything special, he went against his instincts and the delegation’s advice, and brought it home.
Having seen past the rock’s rough skin, his instincts proved correct. Sawing through the rock, he discovered quartz and citrine inside. The valuable stone now sits in his collection.
From the Central Highland’s Lam Dong Province to Gia Lai, Buon Me Thuot, Phan Thiet and Ha Tien, Tam has travelled all over the country in search of more precious stones. His travels were so difficult, he often had to push himself to carry on.
"As a child, I always believed that God would support me as long as I was determined," said Tam.
Luckily for Tam, his efforts did finally pay off. After hard work and patience, Tam can now proudly show off his giant gem collection, sitting in his showroom on Ba Huyen Thanh Quan Street in District 3, HCM City.
"Over 90 per cent of them are originally from Viet Nam," boasts Tam. "The rest come from sites all over the world.
"It is quite erroneous to think that Viet Nam has been depleted of gems. On the contrary, I think many generations to come will discover its potential."
Until those generations start searching, Tam hasn’t given up on his quest yet. While he was offerred a position teaching at the Geological Faculty at HCM City’s Hong Bang University, he turned it down, preferring to concentrate his attention on gems.
"My only regret is that age and health are catching up on me, and there are so many things I want to complete. Collecting gems requires not only passion but also luck, skill and financial resources. It’s not something just anyone can do."
With much of his hard work behind him, Tam continues to look ahead. Although his wife is now dead, his daughter shares his passion and participates in the family business.
"As long as I keep living, I’ll continue to add unique and favourite gems to my collection. To be honest, financial support is hard to find these days but I’m hoping to get more money in the future."
Sitting in a room full of riches, one could suggest to Tam that he wouldn’t have to go too far to find some financial resources. Selling his gems, however, is one step Tam isn’t ready to make.
"Each gem is my own flesh and blood, no matter how much I’m offerred I wouldn’t sell them. We all need money, but none of us would sell our body parts, would we?" — VNS
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Devalued dong and a double-digit inflation rate deter developers
Firms slow vietnam investment
Published on July 15, 2008
Thailand's property developers, Preuksa Real Estate and Prinventure, who had earlier planned to expand their investment in Vietnam, have announced a suspension of these plans for this year as the country's economy overheats.
Preuksa Real Estate chief executive Thongma Vijitphongphun said the company has decided to suspend its investment in Vietnam after studying the market. It had earlier planned to invest US$10 million (Bt336.34 million) in the country this year.
"We have to wait and see what will happen with Vietnam's economy after the country's government devalued the dong last month," he said.
Meanwhile, Prinventure, a joint venture between Prinsiri and Univentures, which had earlier planned to develop a residential project in Vietnam, has also suspended its investment, a company source said.
Vietnam's economy has shown strong growth since 2005. Because of this, a number of overseas land developers expanded their investments by setting up joint ventures with local partners. These companies included Capitaland's Vista, Keppel and Tien Phuoc's Estelle, several of Hoang Anh Gia Lai's developments and Phu My Hung. Besides Prinventure and Preuksa Real Estate, Amata Corporation, which develops industrial estates, was another serious Thai investor.
However, last month's announcement that Vietnam's economy had overheated and inflation had risen to 26.8 per cent - Asia's highest - following a rise in fuel price, threw a spanner in the works for these developers.
Vietnam's inflation has been in double digits since November, triggering public anger and fuelling labour unrest.
In March, the communist government imposed temporary price controls on 10 goods and services controlled by state-owned enterprises, which included water charges, school and hospital fees, and bus, rail and air travel.
The continuation of the price controls means Vietnam's government, already running a large public deficit, will have to absorb the rising costs of energy and commodities.
Vietnam has also been hit by a ballooning trade deficit, which reached a record high of $14.8 billion in the first half, raising fears of a balance-of-payments crisis and putting downward pressure on the dong.
However, Thongma said the company is studying the market and will revise its plan in the last quarter.
The company's investment in India has been going according to plan and it will start investing there in the last quarter of the year, he said.
Earlier, Preuksa announced that its overseas investment would start with a focus on Vietnam and India. This is part of the company's strategy to become the market leader in the industry on the basis of strong research-and-development capabilities.
At a glance
-- Preuksa and Prinventure have announced a suspension of investment in Vietnam this year.
-- Preuksa had plans to invest Bt336 million in the country.
-- Prinventure had planned to develop a residential project there.
Vietnam to relax policy, stop draining cash
HANOI, July 15 (Reuters) - Vietnam will relax its monetary policy by stopping the draining of cash from the economy and allowing more lending targeted at specific projects, a state-run newspaper said on Tuesday citing the central bank governor.
The Saigon Giai Phong (Liberation Saigon) daily also quoted governor Nguyen Van Giau as saying that the central bank would consider cutting its base rate, used by commercial banks to set their lending and deposit rates.
Lending could further expand but "the growth should aim at specific targets, not for every project", the paper quoted Giau as saying.
Vietnam's central bank has raised interest rates three times this year as it aims to cap the country's credit growth at 30 percent in 2008 to help contain double-digit inflation.
The central bank has drained 17 trillion dong ($1.03 billion) from the economy in the first half of 2008, causing the value of cash in circulation at the end of June to drop 7.13 percent from the end of 2007, the paper cited central bank figures as saying.
The monetary tightening measures have brought in some results, with the monthly rise of consumer prices starting to slow, while the annual economic growth has also slowed to 6.5 percent in the first half of the year.
Last month a central bank official said rate cuts might take place in August to support businesses, given an expected slowdown in inflation.
Consumer prices last month jumped 26.8 percent from June 2007 but they were 2.14 percent higher than in May, slowing from a monthly rise of 3.9 percent in May and 2.2 percent in April. Governor Giau also said that the central bank would further maintain its flexibility in regulating the dong exchange rate to benefit both exporters and importers.
A tripling trade deficit this year has pressured on the Vietnamese dong
The central bank has doubled the trading band to +/- 2 percent of the official dollar/dong rate set daily for interbank market deals, allowing more room for banks to trade in the currencies. ($1=16,509 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
Vietnam imports $5.8 bln worth of Chinese goods in 1st 4 months
| HANOI, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam spent over 5.8 billion U.S. dollars importing Chinese goods, including steel, machines, fertilizers, cloth and petroleum products in the first four months of this year, the trade ministry said Tuesday. Between January and April, Vietnam imported more than 1.8 million tons of steel products worth over 1.3 billion dollars, nearly 1.2 billion dollars worth of machines, equipment, tools and spare parts, and 433.3 million dollars worth of cloth from China, said the Trade Information Center under the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Vietnam also imported 925,376 tons of fertilizers totaling 401.5 million dollars, 203.7 million dollars worth of computers, electronics products and their components, and 134,021 tons of petroleum products valued at 128 million dollars from China. The two-way trade between Vietnam and China rose to 15.85 billion dollars in 2007 from 10.42 billion dollars in 2006, according to Vietnam's statistics. |
| |
Thousands of government employees in Vietnam quit jobs
| 17:17' 15/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
At a State agency in HCM City
Low salaries?
Since late 2007, Nguyen Cu Trinh ward, District 1, HCM City has lost its Party Secretary, two Vice Party Secretaries, the Chairman of the People’s Council, the Chairman of the People’s Committee, two Vice Chairmen of the People’s Committee, Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Women’s Union chapter.
This ward is still missing a Chairman of the People’s Council, one Vice Party Secretary, on Vice Chairman of the Women’s Union chapter and one Vice Chairman of the Red Cross chapter.
It was shocking news when Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Planning and Investment Luong Van Ly quit his job to open his own company last year. However, by mid June 2008, HCM City had also lost the Deputy Director of the Department of Trade, Le Van Cong, and the Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism, Le Nhut Tan.
The city’s authorities have recently reported the worrying trend to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Of the 6,500 to have quit their jobs since the middle of 2003, 698 belonged to state management agencies, 3,034 to the education and 849 to the health care sectors.
The HCM City Department of Health lost 576 employees in the period, the Department of Education and Training 288, the Department of Transportation 247.
The people who quit their jobs included high-ranking officials, experienced experts, etc.
The East-West project management unit, the HCM City Hi-tech Park management board and the Department of Trade have lost over 20 qualified engineers and chiefs of divisions.
In its report to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the HCM City People’s Committee wrote that the major reason is the inappropriate salary policy.
HCM City’s Vice Chairman Nguyen Thanh Tai said officials of communes and wards are not paid properly and the average income of government staffs in general is lower than in the labour market.
A Deputy Director of a department in HCM City was paid VND5 million per month. He now works for a foreign investment fund and earns around $4,000 per month.
The Chairman of a large ward in District 1, HCM City, said his total income is VND2.5 million per month while his university classmates bring in over $500/month.
Former Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Planning and Investment Luong Van Ly affirmed his salary couldn’t support his family. However, that wasn’t the major reason for Ly’s departure.
Discouraging working environment?
In his resignation, former Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism Le Nhut Tan said the working environment was not suitable for him, and this is the opinion of many other government employees who have quit their jobs.
“In my department and others the number of staff is very large but few of them really devote themselves to their jobs. Anyone who desires to put everything in order and struggles against negative things is seen as showing off,” said a former head of a state division.
Le Hieu Dang, Vice Chairman of the HCM City Fatherland Front, said perhaps income is not the major reason, but the working environment.
One other prominent reason for this situation is that people are changing their minds. They no longer think working for state agencies is more stable and better than working for others. Many young government staff say that one can still contribute to the state if one works for private companies.
The HCM City Fatherland Front is compiling a recommendation about the wave of job-quitting among state employees and proposing that the local government adjust the salary policy and improve the working environment at state agencies.
The HCM City People’s Committee has been aware of this matter for a year but it hasn’t come up with an effective remedy yet.
HCM City’s Chairman Le Hoang Quan said authorities know but they can’t intervene because of the tight mechanism. The city has asked the government to speed up the salary reform scheme.
(Source: TP) |
Property market inviting for foreign investors
Real estate markets have become more active during the last six months with several foreign-backed projects to build tourist facilities and hi-tech zones under-way.
The tourism real estate projects are increasing in expectation of a boom in the number of visitors coming to Vietnam, a property expert said.
“With several international events being held and planned for Vietnam, the country’s tourism destinations are attracting the attention of tourists from around the world,” he said.
“The local property market is very attractive to foreign investors,” said Francis Ng Sool Lin, director of Malaysia’s Berjaya Land Berhad.
“It is attracting several investors from Malaysia and Southeast Asia to the potential market.”
Several investors from the Middle East were also reported to be interested in the local property market. Recently, executives from Sovereign Hospitality Holdings visited Vietnam to study property investment opportunities.
In May, Canadian property company Asian Coast Development Ltd. (ACDL) invested US$4.2 billion in one of the nation’s largest tourism projects in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.
The completed development will include a five star hotel, an international convention center, an apartment complex and a golf course.
In July, Kingdom Hotel Investment started to sell apartments in Raffles Residences in Da Nang Province at a price of more than $1 million. The apartments are located alongside a 30-kilometer beach and Ngu Hanh Mountain.
Hong Kong’s Starbay Holdings is also considering investing in a $1.6 billion tourism complex on a 500-hectare area on southern Phu Quoc Island.
Recently, France’s Accor Corporation broke ground on the luxurious 400-room Novotel Hanoi on the Park, which will become Accor’s fifth hotel in the capital. Previously, a project to construct Vietnam’s first six star hotel began in central Khanh Hoa Province, backed by Vinpearl Trading and Tourism JSC.
In the meantime, projects to construct hi-tech zones, related infrastructure and luxury apartments in Ho Chi Minh City are attracting billions of dollars from foreign investors.
In June, a Taiwanese-Vietnamese joint venture received a 50-year license to build a 15.9-hectare software park in the Thu Thiem New Urban Area.
The $1.2 billion Thu Thiem Software Park will be developed by local company SaigonTel and TA Associates Vietnam.
On July 1, local authorities granted a license to Berjaya Land Berhad for a $3.5 billion project to construct a university village in HCMC’s Hoc Mon District.
The 880-hectare project is expected to comprise an educational campus and facilities, as well as hotels, convention centers and civic and administrative zones.
Source: Thanhnien News
Vietnam to develop northern economic corridor
Under the plan, economic growth of the northern economic corridor will be 1.2-1.4 times that of Vietnam, and import-exports via the corridor will grow over 20 percent annually, reaching some2 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, 4.5-5.0 billion dollars in 2015 and more than 10 billion dollars in 2020.
Vietnam will pour some 1.4 billion dollars into building a six-lane expressway linking Hanoi and Lang Son bordering China. Construction of another six-lane expressway stretching from the capital city to Hai Phong with investment of nearly 1.2 billion dollars is expected to start in 2008 and finish in 2010.
Construction of a deepwater seaport named Lach Huyen in Hai Phong will also be scheduled to begin this year. It will be capable of handling 25 million tons of cargoes in 2010 and 40 million tons in 2020.
Under the plan, there will be three international border gates,13 border markets and some trade and tourism centers along the Vietnam-China borders.
In May 2004, the governments of Vietnam and China agreed to develop two international economic corridors involving such Vietnamese and Chinese localities as Kunming-Lao Cai-Hanoi-Hai Phong and Nanning-Lang Son-Hanoi-Hai Phong, and the Beibu Gulf economic belt involving China's Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Hong Kong and Macao, and 10 coastal localities of Vietnam, to accelerate socioeconomic development of the involved cities and provinces, as well as their trade and economic ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Miss Venezuela crowned Miss Universe
Miss USA trips -- again
- Story Highlights
- Dayana Mendoza received the crown from her predecessor, Riyo Mori of Japan
- Crystle Stewart of Texas is the second Miss USA in a row to fall down during pageant
- The show was hosted by talk show star Jerry Springer and Spice Girl Melanie Brown
NHA TRANG, Vietnam (AP) -- Miss Venezuela was crowned Miss Universe 2008 on Monday in a contest marked by the spectacle of Miss USA falling down during the evening gown competition for the second year in a row.
An elated Dayana Mendoza received the crown from her predecessor, Riyo Mori of Japan, and then prepared to meet a gaggle of reporters. Miss Venezuela, 22, was once kidnapped in her homeland and says the experience taught her to remain poised under pressure.
Tension got under the skin of Crystle Stewart of Texas, the second Miss USA in a row to fall down during the Miss Universe pageant. She tripped on the train of her bejeweled evening gown as she made her entrance.
During the 2007 Miss Universe contest in Mexico City, Miss USA Rachel Smith also tumbled during the evening gown competition and became an unintended star on You Tube, where the video was shown over and over again.
Like Smith, Stewart quickly stood up after her fall and continued on as if nothing had happened.
Stewart, 26, is a motivational speaker and former track and filed star who is working on a book called "Waiting to Win." The Houston native plans to open a character-development school for young children and has worked with autism victims in the Texas schools.
The final five contestants included four from Latin America: Miss Mexico, Miss Dominican Republic, Miss Colombia and Miss Venezuela. Rounding out the final five was Miss Russia.
Miss Colombia finished second behind Mendoza.
Miss Thailand won the prize for best national costume and Miss El Salvador was chosen by her peers as Miss Congeniality.
During her interview with the judges, Mendoza was asked who she thought has it easier in life, women or men.
"God made us to share and have differences," she replied, then highlighted what she regards as the different thought processes of men and women.
"Men think that the faster way to go to a point is to go straight," she said. "Women know that the faster way to go to a point is to go to the curves."
The NBC show was hosted by talk show star Jerry Springer and Spice Girl Melanie Brown and broadcast live to hundreds of millions of viewers in 170 countries.
Eighty contestants gathered in the seaside city of Nha Trang, Vietnam, vying to succeed reigning Miss Universe Riyo Mori of Japan.
Sporting yellow, green and orange bikinis, the 15 semifinalists strutted across the stage during the swimsuit competition to the sounds of Lady Gaga, who belted out the pulsating "Just Dance" in a platinum blond wig. Miss Vietnam, Lam Thuy Nguyen, was greeted with a roar from the Vietnamese audience.
The final 10 then competed in the evening gown event.
They performed in front of a panel of judges that included international fashion experts and Donald Trump Jr., whose father, the real estate magnate and TV star, co-owns the pageant with NBC.
This year's contestants spanned a wide range of experiences and aspirations.
Miss Albania was a professional basketball player. Miss Argentina says she has paranormal experiences. Miss Antigua & Barbuda is fascinated by snakes. Miss Angola was in a plane crash while trying to escape a conflict during her country's civil war.
The show has been a publicity bonanza for Vietnam, where beauty contests are very popular. The contest featured segments on many of the nation's most popular tourist destinations, such as Hue, Hoi An, Sapa and Ha Long Bay.
The program set has been dominated by iconic Vietnamese images, such as bamboo trees, conical hats and lotus flowers.
The tuxedoed Springer made a grand entrance on a motorbike -- the vehicle of choice in Vietnam where the streets are teeming with millions of the speeding two-wheelers.
Vietnam's Vung Tau lures visitors with beaches and pagodas
by Nhat Ha
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| Houses of the holy: Stupas at Thien Thai Pagoda. — VNS Photos Cat Mai |
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| For those seeking peace: Tourists visit Thuong Chieu Monastery. |
BA RIA – VUNG TAU — In the two hour car ride from HCM City to Vung Tau, you can visit not just the natural beauty of Vung Tau’s beaches but also hundreds of pagodas and temples along the way.
Starting at milestone 76 on National Highway 51 in Dong Nai Province, Thien Vien Thuong Chieu (Thuong Chieu Monastery) will catch your eye thanks to a strikingly red-flowered trellis above its gate. A majestic three-door gate takes you to the breezy and peaceful grounds of the area.
Upon reaching Tan Thanh District, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, visitors to the Van Phat Quang Dai Tong Lam Pagoda can see the biggest central worship area in the country, 91m long and 46m wide, as recognised by the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha. The pagoda is also the record holder for having the most Buddha statues. Nine statues made of granite and 10,000 smaller ones watch over the area.
As you pass by the Tam Phuoc rice field in Long Dien District, a shady path can take those with a taste for wanderlust to Ba Co Temple and Thien Thai Pagoda on Dinh Co Mountain.
Ba Co Temple was built on top of Dinh Co Mountain over 250 years ago. Worhippers and tourists alike have to climb 220 steps up 80m to get there. The temple is said by locals to be so sacred that it receives nearly one hundred of visitors each day.
Looking down from Ba Co Temple, take in a panoramic view of the Long Dien rice fields and Ba Ria Town.
Near Ba Co Temple is Thien Thai Pagoda, which lies at the root of Dinh Co Mountain. Spread out across 6ha, Thien Thai showcases a three-door gate, a central place of worship, an auditorium, a bat quai stage and a stupas garden. All of the pagoda’s facilities were built harmoniously with each other. Combined with the surrounding landscape, it is a stunning scene.
However, the most prominent detour in the trip from HCM City to Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province is Van Hanh Road.
The road is well-known by many domestic and international tourists alike since it is the home to more than 200 pagodas, monasteries and temples right after another, interspersed with orchards, eucalyptus forests and wastelands with wild grass and flowers.
The road runs from Tan Thanh District’s Phu My Town to the Thi Vai Mountain. It is a narrow asphalt road lined with pagodas, temples and a few private homes.
According to abbots of the pagodas there, most of the pagodas were built after 1975. Some were moved from Da Lat City in Lam Dong Province.
At the time, Van Hanh village was sparsely populated so the local pagodas erected over large sites. Some of them were built on large hills with spacious gardens and orchards.
The pagodas in Van Hanh village are difference from those in northern provinces. While northern pagodas usually look more ancient, cloistered and solemn than the Van Hanh pagodas, the architecture of southern pagodas tend to highlight spaciousness, openness, modernity and convenience. The main halls of southern pagodas boast their height and width with windows to let in as much wind and light as possible, and are paved with floral-patterned enamelled tiles.
Netlike panels used to decorate the Van Hanh pagodas lack the meditative features of their northern cousins, but look radiant nevertheless. For example, Bat Nha Pagoda’s bell tower and central courtyard are brightly decorated with yellow-tubed tiles.
Many pagodas are ready to serve vegetarian meals for visitors, especially on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month.
Along with orchards and vegetable gardens, the pagodas along Van Hanh Road also boast dazzling flowers.
Liana plants with yellow flowers surround Linh Buu Pagoda, while a verdant vegetable garden and delightful cucumber trellis punch up Pho Thien Pagoda.
Some of the pagodas on Thi Vai Mountain feature a lotus pond and an orchard with dragon fruit, custard-apple, longan, jackfruit and banana trees.
The last section of Van Hanh Road is the most beautiful. Running along the mountain and open fields, it cannot get more picturesque and tranquil when the sun sets. Several different kinds of birds chirp their way back to the mountain at that time.
Van Hanh Road is 65km from HCM City. Visitors can take National Highway 51 about 200m past Phu My Industrial Park, and turn left to get onto the road. — VNS
Have money, will spend: Vietnamese acquire taste for luxury
Nguyen Thuy Hanh has just spent over US$300 on an Elle skirt. The 20-year-old bank employee wears a Giovanni T-shirt and jeans she bought while on business in Europe last month.
“I like Elle,” says Hanh. “Everyone in my group uses its products.”
In a country where the yearly per capita income was a mere $260 in 1995, spending on luxury brands is becoming increasingly common, especially among the nouveaux riches and youngsters, many of whom have possibly experienced poverty.
The popularity of Louis Vuitton shoes, Prada handbags, Chanel perfume and Omega watches has soared along with the per capita income, which was $715 last year.
“We recently sold three dresses at nearly $7,000 each,” says Nguyen Thu Giang, a young saleswoman at a South Korean fashion shop that sells Besti Belly products, that start at $150.
Luxury shoppers are often children of business families or those with well-paid jobs in foreign companies and powerful state-owned enterprises in banking, finance, information technology, insurance and other fields.
Sixty-eight percent of youngsters say brand is their biggest concern when buying, and 73 percent are ready to pay more for products with high quality, according a survey by advertising and marketing agency Mindshare Vietnam.
“I like famous brands,” says Nguyen Thu Ha, a press assistant at a foreign news agency, who had just bought a $700 Prada handbag in Hanoi.
“They help you show your taste and style.”
None of these products were available in the country just 20 years ago.
Today many youths, born in the late 1980s when the country started economic reform (doi moi), are determined to enjoy life, pampering themselves with jeans, shoes, cosmetics, cell phones and scooters made by global brands like Gucci, Shiseido, Nokia or Piaggio.
It is making Vietnam, a country with a population of 86.5 million, two-thirds of them under 30, an increasingly lucrative market for retailers.
The retail market’s annual growth ranged from 18-23 percent in the 2003-2007 period, according to the Association of Vietnamese Retailers.
Last year retail sales stood at VND740 trillion ($44.9 billion).
Clothing, footwear, cosmetics and perfume sales have seen annual growths of 11-14 percent in volume.
Flip side
But for the large majority of people in the country, luxury brands remain out of reach.
“A pair of Gucci shoes may cost me one year’s salary,” says Thai Van Thang, a waiter at a Hanoi hotel.
At a new watch shop in the capital, several Rado, Omega, and Oris watches priced at over $10,000 are on display.
“Some customers are ready to splurge a large amount of money on something nice,” a salesman named Giang says.
“It will reveal which social class they belong to.”
But this new brashness makes many people uncomfortable.
Older people like Hanh’s mother, who were witness to terrible economic hardship in the past, cannot understand how her daughter can spend hundreds of dollars on a dress.
“We are comfortable in Vietnamese clothes that cost around $10. The money she spent on the dress can be used for better things.”
Hanh does not think so.
“My parents always try to save for the future, for a rainy day. But we have a different concept now. We want to enjoy life.”
With a sleek Nokia cell phone in her hand, the girl gets off her Japanese-made Honda Spacy scooter to enter a clothes shop in Vincom tower, an upscale department store that sells French perfumes and Italian shoes to an emerging urban middle class.
Living in a dynamic economy, many Vietnamese youths do not worry about unemployment – jobs are easy to find.
In fact, job-hopping has become common, especially among qualified youths who want to earn a lot of money.
Construction engineer Nguyen Nhat Thanh sums up the attitude of many urban youths while sipping a frothing cappuccino at one of the city’s Wi-Fi cafes: “People achieve success and money through hard work. And they have the right to enjoy them.”
Global beauties in nail-biting wait on eve of Miss Universe pageant
For a gruelling month, they have strutted their stuff in swimsuits, high heels and evening gowns, national costumes and Vietnamese au dai suits, trying to catch the eyes and win the hearts of jury panelists.
They have braved the tropical summer heat, a hectic travel schedule and endless rehearsals, local crowds and paparazzi, and even a bat that drew wide circles through the spotlight of one of the many preliminary events.
But the moment of truth -- when 79 dreams are crushed and one comes true -- was fast approaching in this 57th edition of a winner-takes-all contest that, organisers say, will be watched by a billion people in 170 countries.
The "Final Night" show starts at 8am Monday here to coincide with the prime-time Sunday evening TV slot in the United States, home of the extravaganza that is co-owned by millionaire-celebrity Donald Trump.
Speculation on the front-runner has run hot in the palm-fringed resort town of Nha Trang, fuelled by pageant-bloggers and scraps of gossip that have trickled out of the resort where the women are sequestered away.
Many favoured Miss Venezuela, 22-year-old Dayana Mendoza (height: 178cm/ 5 foot 10), whose country is admired here as a 'pageant powerhouse' that has long drilled contestants with makeovers, English classes and runway-practice.
"She seems to come with that mindset that, no matter what happens on the final night, you're only a Miss Universe contestant once in your life and you have to enjoy it," enthused one contest insider who asked not to be named.
"She has really endeared herself to the Vietnamese. She even tripped in the au dai section and she still won. She showed remarkable poise."
Miss Venezuela was also the hot favourite of punters on the betting website www.bookmaker.com, followed by other Western hemisphere beauties from Puerto Rico, Panama, the United States and Colombia.
The long-legged ranks of hopefuls were last week thinned out to 15 semi-finalists, although the shortlist has been kept a tightly-guarded secret, even from the contestants.
The select group of women with a shot at the diamond-studded gold crown will only be announced part-way through the show, before judges further slash their numbers in the swimsuit and evening gown sections.
The final interviews will be crunch-time in the event em-ceed by US talk show host Jerry Springer and Britain's ex-"Spice Girl" pop star Mel B, to determine who will succeed Japan's Riyo Mori as Miss Universe.
No matter who takes the 120,000-dollar crown -- and the cash, prizes, tiara, New York City luxury apartment and year of free world travel that go with it -- Vietnam already considers itself the real winner of the event.
Host town Nha Trang, located near the wartime US naval base of Cam Ranh Bay, has had a major facelift, including a new flower-lined airport road and a beachside concrete edifice that resembles a blossoming lotus.
The venue, the Diamond Bay resort -- where the women were protected by bodyguards, and eagle-eyed chaperones enforced a strict alcohol ban -- was built in less than a year, just in time for the event.
The limousines of Vietnam's new rich, who have paid up to 1,800 dollars for 'super-VIP' tickets, were parked on streets that police cleared weeks ago of street vendors and prostitutes in a customary big-event crackdown.
Vietnam lobbied hard last year to become the first communist nation to host a Miss Universe contest. Seemingly on a roll, it was also chosen last week as the location for the rival Miss World pageant in 2010.
Its leaders, eager to shine the global spotlight on Vietnam and boost tourism, have even turned a blind eye to the bikini section that, strictly speaking, breaches prudish laws banning risque exposure.
Korean Investors in Vietnam to Be Hit Hardest
Staff Reporter
South Koreans will likely be hit the hardest among foreign investors in Vietnam if the Southeast Asian nation falls into deeper economic trouble. Domestic businesses and investors have put $13.5 billion into the country since 1988, the largest amount among international investors.
The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Sunday that asset deflation and other ongoing economic difficulties facing Vietnam are part of the growth process after years of rapid economic expansion.
But the ministry did not exclude the possibility that the Southeast Asian nation could suffer from the sudden depreciation of its currency and a similar economic malaise to the one South Korea grappled with in the late 1990s.
Korean companies and investors poured $4.58 billion into Vietnam last year alone, becoming the largest foreign investor for the second consecutive year.
In particular, domestic institutional and retail investors have spent $2.7 billion purchasing equities listed on the Vietnamese stock market, while more than 70 Korean builders are currently undertaking nearly 120 construction projects.
As the largest foreign investor in Vietnam, Korean businesses will likely suffer the most if the Southeast Asian country falls into a full-blown economic crisis.
Its stock market has dropped 68 percent since March 2007, when its benchmark VN index hit an all-time high. The value of real estate and other assets have also been declining sharply as international investors have taken money out of Vietnam, putting downward pressure on its local currency, the dong.
To prop up the dong's value and curb rises in consumer prices, Vietnam's central bank has raised its policy interest rate three times this year to 14 percent. But prices of goods and services in the country rose 25.2 percent in May from a year earlier, placing the heavy financial burden on businesses and households.
It has also posted a deficit in the current account balance this year as it has to pay more for oil and other imported commodities amid surging prices. Vietnam recorded an $11.5 billion shortfall in May, equivalent to 16 percent of its 2007 gross domestic product.
With slowing exports and rising imports, the Vietnamese government has revised down its growth target for this year to 7 percent from an earlier 9 percent.
Against the asset deflation and the weakening dong, the finance ministry suggested that local companies and investors with a stake in the Southeast Asian nation boost foreign exchange and other corporate risk management to tide over current economic difficulties.
``Now is the time for businesses to be more conservative and focus more on risk management. But they should continue to maintain a foothold in Vietnam because it is an important production base for us and has a large consumer market,'' a ministry official said.
He said following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, many foreigners snatched up companies and real estate properties here at a bargain price and reaped huge capital gains several years later, suggesting Korean companies take advantage of Vietnam's current economic conditions and establish a long-term business scheme.
leehs@koreatimes.co.kr
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Vietnam reportedly arrests five over businessman kidnapping
Updated
Vietnamese local media is reporting the arrest of five men who allegedly took a Vietnamese-Australian businessman hostage last month.Our South East Asia correspondent, Karen Percy, says the five men were reportedly arrested in Ho Chi Minh city on Tuesday.
They are alleged to have kidnapped the Vietnamese-Australian man, Tran Ngoc, on June 22.
They reportedly held him at a hotel in a district on the outskirts of the southern city for just a few days.
They are believed to have initially demanded a ransom of more than $US40,000.
But Mr Tran's family is said to have paid about a third of the amount in cash and gold to have him released.
Local news agencies say the kidnappers were hired on behalf of a local business woman to settle an outstanding debt.
Vietnam's phone, Internet subscriptions rise in first half
HANOI, July 9 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam signed up over 9.9 million mobile and fixed phone subscribers in the first half of this year, raising the total to 61.8 million, seeing respective year-on-year surges of 11.3 percent and 69.8 percent, according to the country's General Statistics Office on Wednesday. Vietnam made total postal and telecommunications revenues of 33trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (nearly 2.1 million U.S. dollars) in the six-month period, up 32.2 percent, the office said, adding that the state-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group alone gained revenues of 22.2 trillion VND (roughly 1.4 billion dollars). On July 8, Global Telecommunications Corporation under Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security signed with Russian firm VimpelCom a contract to establish a mobile phone operator named GTel Mobile, which plans to offer its services in mid-2009. Now, six operational mobile operators are VinaPhone, MobiFone, Viettel, S-Fone, EVN Telecom and HT Mobile. Vietnam had 19.8 million Internet users, or 23.5 percent of its total population by the end of May, up from nearly 16.2 million users by the end of last May, the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center under the country's Ministry of Information and Communications told Xinhua on Wednesday. Of the 19.8 million Internet users, over 5.8 million are subscribers, including 1.6 million broadband ones, the center said, noting that the country had total international bandwidth of 18,188 Mbps, and 74,625 websites using Vietnamese domain ".vn" by the end of May. Under the ministry's plan, all ministries, sectors and state administrative agencies at district level upward, institutes, universities, colleges and senior high schools will have broadband Internet connections by 2010. |
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Ministry of Industry and Trade organises first online meeting
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In the context of increasing prices of materials, inflation occurring in many countries in the region and the world, with both subjective and objective disadvantages, over the past six months, Vietnam's economy has recorded encouraging results. Total industrial production value is estimated at over VND 326.6 trillion, up 16.5% compared to the same period last year. Total export turnover reached US$29.69 billion, registering a year-on-year increase of 31.8%, the highest growth in the past several years. Addressing the meeting, Deputy PM Hoang Trung Hai stressed that though the industrial production value increased, however, the added value of production was still limited. Trade deficit was still big. He urged that efforts should be made in the remaining six months of the year to overcome difficulties for businesses and strive for a 28% export turnover growth. He asked enterprises to pool efforts to promote industrial production, creating stable jobs for workers, bringing into full play the capacity of their enterprises for sufficient supply of necessities of the economy including electricity, coal, fertiliser, construction steel and iron, engines, agricultural equipment, trucks and some consumer goods and products for exports such as footwear, garments and textiles, milk, cooking oil, among others. Enterprises were also asked to increase production of materials to help reduce imports, practise thrift to lower product prices, boost exports to reduce trade deficit, keep a close control of the imported goods with priority given to imports of necessities for production. The exports of rice must follow the management of the government. The imports and sale of petrol must be closely watched. Enterprises are urged to make thorough consideration of their import demands to ensure production. Investment in projects that are unnecessary should be delayed to focus investment in projects that need to be completed soon. The National Oil and Gas Group was reminded of pooling more efforts to put the Dung Quat Oil Refinery in operation by the first quarter of 2009. The Deputy PM also requested that the electricity sector should make greater efforts to put new electricity power plants into operation as soon as possible. Economic groups, corporations and enterprises specialising in producing necessities are requested to ensure sufficient supply to meet domestic consumption demands with high quality, stable prices, especially of such products as rice, steel, cement and fertiliser. He also urged relevant agencies to strengthen work on domestic market management to prevent acts that could cause market disorder. Proposals and complaints by enterprises must be dealt in time while the role of trade associations must be promoted to support enterprises to boost production, thus contributing to stabilise the market. |
Nhan Dan - The Ministry of Industry and Trade on July 8 organised an online meeting, the first ever, to review the results recorded in the first half of the year and discuss ways of implementation of solutions in the later months of the year.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
German scientists forecast loss of Vietnam coastline
Vietnam targeting 50 million tonnes of coal by 2010
Accordingly, the domestic coal sector will become a developed industry of high competitiveness and advanced technology in the region, meeting the domestic demand and ensuring energy security.
It said that by 2010, work on exploration and appraisal of the natural resources 300 meters down under the Dong Bac coal basin will be completed and by 2015, exploration and appraisal of the natural resources of the Red river delta coal basin will be finished.
The sector attaches importance to investment in modern technology with high level of automation in order to avoid the maximum mining accidents. Transport of coal by automobile vehicles is also targeted to be reduced to t
Selling land for gold, not VND
| 07:34' 08/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
VietNamNet Bridge – After a long period of quoting land prices in VND, landlords are now setting prices in gold instead of VND in order to avoid risks from the VND’s devaluation. Statistics released by the Ministry of Planning and Investment show that the gold price has been increasing for the last few years. In2001-2007, the gold price increased by 2.52 times, or 14.1% a year. The figure proves to be much higher than the consumer price increase (1.54 times or 6.35% a year) and dollar price increase (1.11 times, or 1.55% a year). Lam, who has sold his apartment at Trung Hoa-Nhan Chinh urban area, said that it is wiser to get gold for selling houses nowadays. After getting gold from the apartment sale, Lam made a deposit at a bank. Gold keeps rising in price and it seems to be free of inflation impacts. A staff at Sacomreal, a real estate trading floor, said that there have been more transactions in gold recently, though it is too early to say a new tendency of making transactions in gold has begun. According to Tran Huu Dang, a staff at Bao Tin Minh Chau Gold and Gemstone Company, gold is still considered the safest investment channel; therefore, it is understandable why people prefer VND to gold. Those who have assets in VND also want to convert the money into gold to protect their assets. However, opinions still vary about the tendency of selling land for gold. Vu Minh, Director of a real estate firm on Nguyen Trung Vu, General Director of The Ky Moi Real Estate Company, said that no successful deal in which land and houses were sold for gold has been made at his company for seven years. Vu said that it is quite complicated to quote prices and make transactions with payment in gold, and sometimes cause difficulties for both buyers and sellers. When the gold price increases, buyers hesitate to sell land, and when the gold price decreases, sellers do not want to sell land. Therefore, it is difficult for sellers and buyers to find common voices. “I think that making transactions with payment in gold will become a trend. It will become more popular when the gold market is stable for a long time,” Vu said. |
Vietnam Dong Black Market Rate Gains, Narrowing Gap
July 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Vietnamese dong rate in the black market has strengthened towards the official level after the government released more dollars into the economy and cracked down on state banks' currency transactions.
The dong, allowed to trade 2 percent either side of a daily reference rate set by the central bank, traded at 16,849.50 per dollar at 4:15 p.m. in Hanoi. The black market rate is now about 2 percent away from the allowable range, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The gap was as wide as 10 percent in June.
``Their measures have been more aggressive in bringing the two markets in line,'' said Matthew Hildebrandt, an economist at JPMorgan in Singapore in an interview today.
Vietnam's financial markets tumbled this year after the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate three times to 14 percent to tame inflation that accelerated to a 16-year high of 26.8 percent in June. The gap between the twin rates also narrowed as the State Bank of Vietnam widened the dong's daily trading band from 1 percent on June 27 and allowed the currency to drop almost 5 percent this year.
``Now people have a bit more confidence,'' Michael Pease, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce and general director of Ford Vietnam Ltd. said in an interview on July 2. ``A manager from a local company was telling me the other day that all his employees are complaining that every time they need to pay a bill, they have to change their dollars into dong because all their savings are in dollars.''
Converging Rates
The black market rate commonly refers to the rate offered by street money changers, while state banks use so-called parallel rates by adding fees or conducting multiple currency exchanges. The central bank threatened to fine banks and money changers which violate regulations.
Gold shops and street money changers in the old quarters of Hanoi were charging 17,150 dong to the dollar today, or 1.7 percent away from the official rate, closer to the inter-bank parallel market rate of 17,200, which Hildebrandt suggested.
Black-market demand won't dry up for now, Hildebrandt said.
``These two rates won't converge until confidence returns,'' Hildebrandt said. ``They need to use more market- based measures like providing sufficient amounts of liquidity to the market instead of relying on administrative measures.''
Morgan Stanley wrote in a report this week that intervention by Vietnam, India and South Korea to strengthen their currencies will fail. It estimates Vietnam's currency reserves to be $27 billion.
`Bearish' on Dong
The dong will decline to 17,500 to the dollar by the end of the year, said Thomas Harr, a Singapore-based currency strategist at Standard Chartered Bank.
``We remain bearish on the Vietnamese dong due to the high inflation, the very wide trade deficit and the government's preference for a weaker currency,'' Harr said.
The trade deficit in the first six months widened to $14.8 billion, up from $5.2 billion a year earlier.
Imports have slowed due to a package of measures including interest-rate increases, according to a report dated yesterday from Moody's Economy.com, a unit of New York-based Moody's Corp. Vietnam imported $6.8 billion of goods in June, according to preliminary government figures, from $7.9 billion in May.
Traders are pricing in an 18 percent decline in the dong in the coming year to 20,500 per dollar, according to offshore 12- month non-deliverable forwards. On June 18, the rate was as high as 24,900. Forwards are agreements in which assets are bought and sold at current prices for future delivery. Non-deliverable contracts are settled in dollars.
The dong's unofficial rate gained to 17,500 by the end of June, compared with 19,400 in the middle of the month, according to Dragon Capital, a Ho Chi Minh City-based investment fund.
``The dong was at all times well above the very dubious non-deliverable-forward rates that investment banks have been so focused on,'' Bill Stoops, head of research at Dragon, wrote in a note to investors dated July 4.
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Lui Singapore at plui4@bloomberg.netJason Folkmanis in Berkeley, California at folkmanis@bloomberg.net
Vietnam car sales up 141 percent in first half
VAMA said from January to June its members sold 68,609 vehicles, including cars, trucks and buses, compared with 28,522 in the first six months of 2007.
Japan's Toyota topped the list with 12,510 units sold, followed by domestic companies Vinamotor with 14,594 units and Truong Hai with 11,295.
In June alone, car sales in the fast-industrialising country were up by 60 percent year-on-year at 9,749 units, the association said.
However, auto sales were down 15 percent from May to June after the communist government raised some taxes in a bid to curb imports.
Vietnam, which has struggled with double-digit inflation and a ballooning trade deficit this year, estimated economic growth of 6.5 percent in the first half compared with 7.9 percent in the same period last year.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has urged state agencies to limit car imports to curb Vietnam's trade deficit, which widened to an estimated 14.8 billion dollars in the first half, and to reduce city traffic jams.
PetroVietnam proposes expansion of Dung Quat oil refinery
The expansion of the country’s first oil refinery, which is under construction in central Quang Ngai province, is aimed at meeting the increasing fuel demand on the domestic market and ensure national energy security.
According to the plan, the expansion will begin after the oil refinery goes into operation, slated for February 2009.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Vietnam Crisis Strikes Korean Firms
By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
It's no secret that Vietnam's economy is slipping. The country's economic growth recently hit a seven-year low, the stock and property markets are tumbling and even talks of IMF-style assistance is stemming. All of this is happening thousands of miles away, but for Korean firms with billions of dollars invested there, the looming crisis can't feel any closer.
Currently, about 20 domestic companies are carrying out projects of all sizes in the Southeast Asian country. Among them, POSCO, Samsung Electronics, Kumho Asiana and GS Engineering & Construction have been working up some of the most lucrative initiatives.
Already a number of them, however, are starting to show signs of looking shaky.
Most recently, steel giant POSCO lost its significant joint venture partner Vinashin, which cancelled plans last month to invest $1 billion in a $5 billion steel mill project. The Vietnamese state-run shipbuilder decided to pull out as part of its government's efforts to cut spending.
POSCO said it would proceed alone with the plan, but the fallout of the high-profile venture raises alarm bells for foreign investors and shareholders, which hold a large stake of the company.
Another big gambler in the Vietnam game is Kumho Asiana Group, which is pumping heavy cash into its diverse projects there. From building hotels, golf courses to a major urban center, the conglomerate has been kicking off new leads one after another.
But it is so far seeing little or no returns with ongoing problems over government clearances and land acquisition.
Analysts warn that if some of the heavily-invested projects don't see solid results soon, the company's entire operations could be at risk due to mounting debt.
Also into the building business in Vietnam is GS Engineering & Construction, which plans to invest trillions of won to build a new urban city in the Cu Chi district of Ho Chi Minh City.
Despite concerns that the property market will be at one of the biggest risks, GS says its current undertaking is safe as it will take more than 10 years to be completed.
Handset makers LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics are also under similar pressure as Vietnam's worsening domestic economy is not only taking a toll on local sales, but affecting plans for production facilities there.
Samsung Electronics started building a new handset facility near Hanoi, with aims to beat out its rival Nokia, but progress has been slowed due to difficulties hiring workers and other external factors largely triggered by Vietnam's financial instability.
Other global investors are taking similar steps back, but are generally planning not to withdraw from the country.
``Vietnam was hyped up too early, too fast, but its potential is still there,'' says a Vietnam specialist at KOTRA.
jhan@koreatimes.co.kr
Vietnam Money-Interbank dollar trade picks up, dong near low
HANOI, July 7 (Reuters) - Dollar transactions on the interbank market in Vietnam picked up in the past week as banks began selling more to each other under the central bank's newly expanded trading band, bankers said on Monday.
On Monday, the State Bank of Vietnam set the mid-point dong rate at 16,519 to the dollar, a notch up from Friday's all time low of 16,520. Given the 2 percent band, effective since June 27, the dong
"The volume of interbank dollar trade significantly improved compared to last week when trade was virtually frozen," a foreign exchange trader at a foreign bank in Hanoi said.
"It showed commercial banks were regaining confidence in the central bank's foreign exchange policy and its ability to supply dollar to the market should demand arise," he added.
At 0820 GMT the dollar was being traded near its ceiling of 16,848 dong, about 2.3 percent below the black market rate.
The dollar's unofficial rate has fallen about 2 percent from last Monday when it was quoted at about 17,600 dong, traders said.
The dollar hit all time high of around 19,000 dong in unofficial trade in June when residents rushed to hoard the hard currency, fearing double-digit inflation and record high trade deficits would trigger the dong's devaluation.
The dollar has eased since then after the central bank vowed to close the gap between the spot interbank rates and those on the unofficial markets and to supply banks with enough dollars. (Reporting by Nguyen Nhat Lam; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
Vietnam to sell 500 bln dong govt bonds on July 11
HANOI, July 7 (Reuters) - Vietnam plans to raise 500 billion dong ($30.3 million) at a government bond auction late this week, the Hanoi stock market said on Monday.
The State Treasury will sell two-year bonds worth 200 billion dong and three-year bonds worth 300 billion dong on Friday and issue the debt on July 15, the over-the-counter exchange said in a statement.
The proceeds will finance major infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges and ports.
At its previous auction on June 27, the State Treasury sold 2 billion dong worth of two-year bonds, its first success in raising funds from selling government debt after seven auctions since late February at which it could not find any buyers.
The July 2010 bond sold on June 27 carried a yield of 11 percent.
Banks, which often buy government bonds, have been struggling to attract dong funds as the central bank tightened monetary supply by raising interest rates and ordered banks to buy debt to rein in annual inflation that hit 26.8 percent in June.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has said Vietnam would further cut money supply to banks as a measure to curb double-digit inflation. The central bank aims to cap Vietnam's credit growth this year at 30 percent after a surge of 54 percent in 2007.
Ratings agencies have downgraded their outlook on Vietnam's sovereign ratings to negative noting that economic imbalances were greater than anticipated and policies had not dealt quickly or strongly enough with inflation. ($1=16,519 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh, Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Vietnam starts work on country's largest steel plant, part of US$7.9 billion project
HANOI, Vietnam: Work has begun on what will be Vietnam's largest steel plant, part of a US$7.9 billion complex that will include a deep-sea port, state-media reported Monday.
The complex, located in central Ha Tinh province and run by Taiwan's Formosa Heavy Industry and Cayman island-registered Sun Steel Corp., or Sunsco, will have an initial annual capacity of 7.5 million tons of steel, the Vietnam Economic Times said.
Formosa holds 95 percent of the project, while Sunsco holds the remaining 5 percent, the paper said.
Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said at a groundbreaking ceremony Sunday that when the complex is finished in three years it is expected to be one of the region's largest and will help strengthen the country's economy.
The government said on its Web site that the plant will import iron ore for its operation and will eventually also use iron ore from Thach Khe mine in the province.
The Thach Khe mine, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Hanoi, has an estimated reserve of 540 million tons of iron ore.
The complex's capacity will be doubled to 15 million tons a year in the second phase, the newspaper reported.
Vietnam's 3G licenses open door to foreign phone operators
| HANOI, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The race for third-generation (3G) licenses is giving Vietnamese mobile phone operators the chance to cooperate with foreign firms, according to local newspaper Vietnam Investment Review on Monday. France Telecom and MobiFone, NTT Docomo and Vina Phone, and SingTel and S-Fone are potential duos of partners. "In any cooperation model with a local operator, each foreign operator wants to hold a stake in a local mobile operator through their investment in both cash and technology," said the source from a foreign company. VinaPhone has revealed its cooperation plan with NTT Docomo, under which the Japanese firm will help the Vietnamese mobile phone operator write its 3G proposal to get one of the four 3G licenses to be granted by the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications. The ministry plans to send invitation letters for 3G license contest this month and each operator will have two months to finish their proposals. Vietnam, with a population of some 87 million, had 48 million mobile phone subscribers by early June. Subscription grew 100 percent against the same period last year, much higher than the growth rates in other ASEAN countries, including Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, according to the ministry. Viettel led Vietnamese mobile phone operators with over 19.4 million subscribers, followed by MobiFone with 13.4 million, VinaPhone 12.1 million and S-Fone more than 3.1 million. |
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US$ price slightly increases on black market in Vietnam
| 17:05' 07/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
At that time, continued price increases and high interest rates, high trade deficit and rumours about the removal of the petroleum price subsidisation and about national foreign currency reserves all eroded people’s confidence in the local currency. That explains why people rushed to buy dollars: they wanted to protect their assets. However, the people’s psychology, once again, showed its role in stabilising the market. Right after the government and State Bank of Explaining the dollar price decreases in the last time, analysts say that information about the conflict in the However, how the dollar will perform in the future remains a question. There are two contradictory arguments about the dollar price tendency. Some experts believe that the government will let the VND revaluate in order to minimise the impacts of inflation. The experts argue that Meanwhile, some others believe that the government will further devaluate the VND to encourage exports and limit imports. They believe that the ideal exchange rate would be VND17,000/US$1, while the forex daily trading band should be +/-2%. |
Monday, July 07, 2008
Vietnam Dong Investors Use Black Market for Dollars
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnam's currency controls are forcing foreign investors into the black market to obtain dollars, aggravating declines in the world's worst-performing stock market and pushing benchmark bond yields above 20 percent.
Businesses that aren't controlled by the government pay about 7 percent more than the official rate when using the dong to buy dollars because the state gives its trading companies priority access to the U.S. currency, the World Bank said. The premium is reducing demand for the nation's stocks and bonds, according to PXP Vietnam Asset Management.
``There is clearly a shortage of dollars,'' said Kevin Snowball, a money manager at PXP Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, which oversees $117 million. ``If you have dollars and you want to buy dong, you will get the official rate, but if you have dong and you want to buy dollars it's a completely different story.''
Vietnam's financial markets are tumbling after the central bank raised interest rates three times this year to 14 percent to tame inflation that accelerated to a 16-year high of 26.8 percent in June. The economy expanded 6.5 percent in the first half, the slowest in at least seven years, while the trade deficit more than doubled to $14.8 billion.
Rally to Rout
Vietnam's benchmark stock index, which climbed 168 percent in the past two years as Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung encouraged state companies to raise cash and finance expansion, slumped 53 percent since December. Yields on five-year government bonds jumped to 20.53 percent on June 13, the highest since at least July 2006, from 8.71 percent on Jan. 3.
The dong has dropped 5 percent this year, its biggest decline since 1998, to 16,846.5 per dollar as of 4:40 p.m. in Hanoi. Traders are pricing in an 18 percent drop in the coming year to 20,500, according to offshore 12-month non-deliverable forwards. The contract was at 16,080 on Dec. 31. Forwards are agreements in which assets are bought and sold at current prices for future delivery. Non-deliverable contracts are settled in dollars.
The official rate will fall 6.4 percent to 18,000 by the end of the year, according to Calyon, the investment banking arm of Credit Agricole SA. HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by market value, predicts it will strengthen 4.4 percent to 16,140 by year-end.
`Currency Crisis'
Vietnam may suffer a ``currency crisis'' similar to the slump in the Thai baht that triggered the regional collapse in 1997, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report May 28.
``The central bank is not providing dollars, except to some importers and some working capital for exporters,'' said Noritaka Akamatsu, a Hanoi-based economist for the World Bank. ``That's why there is some depreciation pressure.''
The State Bank of Vietnam allows the currency to trade 2 percent either side of its daily reference rate. Gold shops and street money changers offer a black market rate of about 18,000, said Akamatsu. Banks offer a similar rate by adding fees to sell dollars, he said. The rate was as high as 19,500, he said.
The dong slumped in the forwards market in May as foreign investors trapped in the bond market bet against the currency to hedge against losses, Akamatsu said.
Frozen Market
Rajeev De Mello, who helps oversee about $600 billion as head of Asian bonds at Western Asset Management Co.'s Singapore office, sold Vietnamese bonds in April and says the market has frozen. Western Asset, part of Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc., also couldn't get a price for dong forwards, he said.
``Even when things were good, it was difficult to buy bonds in any size,'' said De Mello. ``Now when things are bad, it's impossible to either buy or sell.''
Union Investment in Frankfurt, Germany's third-biggest fund manager, forecasts a smaller decline in the dong than the forward market and is buying contracts, said Sergey Dergachev, the firm's emerging-market investor, who helps oversee the equivalent of $285 billion. Union Investment expects an 11 percent drop to 19,000 by Dec. 31.
The risk is Vietnam exhausts its currency reserves of $22 billion supplying dollars or that ``overkill'' in cooling growth causes losses at state banks, said the World Bank's Akamatsu.
Pramerica Fixed Income Asia, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc., the second-biggest U.S. life insurer, is staying away.
``It's a shocking and timely reminder of problems that developing countries face,'' said Clifford Lau, a Singapore- based portfolio manager at Pramerica that oversees $7.6 billion in emerging-market debt. ``Everyone is taking a step back.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Lui in Singapore at plui4@bloomberg.netWes Goodman in Singapore at wgoodman@bloomberg.net
Vietnam's fertilizer imports soar in first half
Vietnam spent 214 million dollars importing 553,000 tons of urea in the six-month period, up 76 percent and 158.3 percent, respectively.
To lessen reliance on fertilizer import and stabilize prices in the domestic markets amid higher world prices, Vietnam is accelerating construction of some producers of urea, diammonium phosphate (DAP), nitrogen-phosphate-kalium (NPK) and organic fertilizers in the northern region. Besides, it plans to build a depot capable of holding over 200,000 tons of fertilizers for reserve and distribution in the southern Mekong Delta.
Vietnam's demand for urea is estimated at nearly 2 million this year, but urea producers in the country can produce 880,000-900, 000 tons of the fertilizer, the Trade Information Center under the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade said, adding that fertilizer makers nationwide can turn out around 1.6 million tons of phosphate and 2.2 million tons of NPK in the year, basically meeting the domestic demand for the two kinds of fertilizers. Vietnam imported nearly 3.8 million tons of fertilizers, totaling 996 million dollars, mainly from China, Indonesia, Russia, the Middle East, Japan and Canada, in 2007, up 21.6 percent and 44. 9 percent, respectively, against 2006, said the statistics office.
More than 1,100 new vehicles hit HCMC/Saigon streets each day
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At a news conference Friday, the department said the number of vehicle registrations includes more than 3.5 million motorbikes and 358,548 cars. Motorbikes, which made up some 91 percent of the total registrations, increased by 6 percent over the first half of the year. From January to June, the city registered an average 177 cars and 1,077 motorbikes every day. More than 800,000 vehicles, including those registered in other jurisdictions, now ply the city’s streets. According to the department, traffic management in the city remained “complicated,” with overloaded infrastructure and many traffic jams. Reported by Dinh Muoi | |||||||
Motorbike bandits busted in HCMC/Saigon
| Binh Thanh District police in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday arrested eight members of a gang in the leadup to a robbery on Nguyen Thai Binh Street, police said. |
The motorbike gang, which was led by Nguyen Hoai Huong, 42, causes victims to crash their motorbikes, then robs them. Huong was arrested with seven others: Pham Thi Xuan, Hoang Nu Thanh Thuy, Nguyen Van Trung Hieu, Truong Dinh Toan, Luong Kim Son, La Mong Hoa and Dao Duy Tho. According to police records, all of them have serious criminal records and some were sought for other crimes, including murder. Police said in the last two years, they have committed numerous robberies in HCMC, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Dong Nai and Binh Duong provinces. Police, who had been watching the gang for a month, said the group committed 10-15 robberies a day. Sometimes, they did three robberies on a street in minutes. They were well organized and usually operated from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Police are still hunting for two members. |
Vietnam Island is undiscovered -- for now
| The Ottawa Citizen |
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The plan was to do absolutely nothing on a beach for an entire week.
This may sound easy, but taking a real vacation is not easy for a travel writer, a fact that elicits absolutely no sympathy from my friends. But the line between work and play is easily blurred when you photograph and write about cycling trips in Ireland or cruising to Antarctica for a living.
I vowed to hide my notebook, pen and cameras under a bed in some bungalow on some tropical beach. It was to be my reward for spending most of a too-short Montreal summer on assignments in the Canadian Arctic: November in steamy Vietnam to escape not only the sleet, but the equally chilling reality of turning 50.
With a champagne bottle under his arm, my longtime buddy, journalist Jim Hutchison, who bases himself in Thailand four months of the year, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City to meet me after I had finished a hectic schedule of filing stories in Hanoi. The next morning we boarded a plane to a place neither of us had heard of two days earlier, called Phu Quoc Island. On the spur of the moment, we allowed a single line in the October 2005 Conde Nast Traveler magazine's Word of Mouth tidbits section to decide our vacation destination: " ... an isle with immaculate beaches and tiny fishing villages an hour's flight from Ho Chi Minh City is among the country's most worthwhile excursions."
Phu Quoc is a teardrop-shaped island west of Ho Chi Minh City -- more commonly referred to by its old name, Saigon -- and just 20 kilometres off the coast of Cambodia. Roughly the size of Singapore, it's blanketed with the largest remaining swath of tropical rainforest in Vietnam. Only 75,000 people live there.
On our final approach I saw, through the plane window, the 25-kilometre-long uninterrupted strip of white sand that is Long Beach glittering in the sun. Funny, I thought, there's hardly anyone on the beach.
A battered taxi picked us up in the blast of tropical heat outside the airport building, which was practically in the centre of the main tiny fishing village of Duong Dong. Instead of staying on Long Beach, which is south of town, we had decided on secluded Ong Lang Beach, a spectacularly pot-holed seven kilometres north of town.
Finally we bumped through an old mango plantation to arrive at Mango Bay Resort, a string of bungalows amid palms and banyan trees. I was in heaven, supine on a deserted kilometre-long curve of beach before my luggage even reached our bungalow. I had no desire to see any sights, shop, learn about the island's culture, past, present or future -- that would be work. I wiggled my toes into the sand, opened a brand new book and sipped an icy Tiger Beer Jim had brought me.
When hunger forced me upright about noon, I was greeted at the open-air restaurant/bar with wafts of sauteed garlic and a blackboard menu announcing marinated and grilled black kingfish and green papaya salad with shrimp as specials. In all of Vietnam, food is morning-market fresh and simply cooked. Firm and white, the kingfish was barbecued and appeared with a tiny dish alongside that held small mounds of salt, pepper and a wedge of lime. Our cheery young waiter, Tin, demonstrated how to squeeze the lime into the salt and pepper, stir, and use the sauce as a fish dip.
"The pepper is not spicy," he explained and he was right. "Our Phu Quoc pepper is famous. Also fish sauce -- the most famous in Vietnam."
The travel writer in me involuntarily raised its head in curiosity, but I banished her by calling for another beer.
Mango Bay is a laid-back eco-resort run by two Saigon-based Brits and a mellow, bare-footed Aussie from Perth named Lawson Johnston, dressed only in well-worn aloha board shorts. Lawson was responsible for the "rammed earth bungalows" like ours, the first in Vietnam.
Rammed earth construction is a Western Australian invention. Wooden forms are filled 20 centimetres deep with a mixture of local soil and cement. The dirt is pounded with wooden rammers down to a thickness of just eight centimetres, then the process is repeated. It is hard as concrete, but more ecologically sound and cooler in the tropical heat.
Ours had a high-peaked thatch roof and a ceiling fan beneath which we slept under mosquito nets. The breeze blew through louvered windows and doors, which also let in the evening sound of cicadas. The bathroom and solar-heated shower were outside, where we had pet geckos on the bamboo wall that separated us from a grove of banana trees. Rustic but stylish, it was all white cotton, wicker and terra cotta.
We settled into a lazy routine. Up early for breakfast, I watched clouds of flitting dragonflies as the sun rose and fishermen sorted out their nets on the beach, then rowed their long, slim boats out to sea. Every morning, two sea eagles circled overhead. A few cute indigenous Phu Quoc Ridgeback puppies, once used by the French as hunting dogs, came looking for company.
Tucking into baguettes with jam -- a legacy of French colonialism -- I fueled my addiction to cafe sua da, slowly drip-dripping Vietnamese espresso through a little metal filter onto a dollop of super-sweetened condensed milk that is then stirred, poured over ice and injected into the neurological system via a straw. When the sun hit baking temperature, I headed for my spot on the beach beneath a thatch umbrella.
Most of the other visitors were European or Australian and we all kept mostly to ourselves. This was not a place for party animals. Just what we wanted.
The bliss of doing nothing wore off after three days and we rented a motorbike for the day to head to the minute rural metropolis of Duong Dong and onward to explore the scene at Long Beach.
"Not much of a 'scene' down there," Lawson mused from his perch at the bar.
He recommended a cafe for lunch and we were off, careening around elephant-sized potholes filled with mud, around mopeds piled ridiculously high with everything from mattresses to a trio of squealing basket-bound pigs. Everyone along the way shouted "hello" and waved.
Cashew and pepper plantations line the road, vines grow up stakes. Phu Quoc pepper is indeed famous throughout Vietnam, both white and black, and, in last year, the country became the world's largest exporter of pepper. When we reached the chaotic meeting place of fishing boats and vendors that is the town market, selling everything from live eels to custom made jeans, I picked up a kilo bag of fresh black pepper. It cost 80 cents.
Across a rickety bridge, Duong Dong is a typical no-frills Vietnamese country town with a government building, bank, restaurants, shops and cafes. It smells faintly, but not unpleasantly, of fish. Fermented fish sauce, to be exact, that other Phu Quoc specialty. In Vietnam everything from grilled shrimp to French Fries is sloshed with nuoc mam -- a pan-Asian condiment as popular as our ketchup and that's known in Thailand as nam pla.
Vietnam's best fish sauce is made in Duong Dong.
"It's the best because we use only long-jawed anchovies unlike our competitors who use a variety of fish," the woman who gave us an informal tour told us amid huge wooden vats where the mixture of fish and salt ferments and ages for an entire year before its first pressing.
"Our name, Phuoc Hong, is known to every chef in Vietnam," she said proudly.
The product is so sought-after that the government constantly chases down counterfeiters.
Long Beach begins just outside town and we bumped down a track towards the Tropicana resort, a cluster of bungalows, a pool and a sea-view cafe overlooking the palm-tree lined beach where a few sunbathers splayed on towels are being massaged by a clan of masseuses who stroll the strand. No tours, no crowds, just beachside cafes where you dine on world-class seafood for less than $10 a couple.
Besides one sizeable two-star resort called Saigon Phu Quoc that was clearly for the tour-bus set, we saw only about a dozen signs pointing down narrow lanes through tropical bush to guesthouses, cottages and bar/cafes on the beach. Then -- nothing.
No shops, gas stations, corner stores. Less than seven kilometres along the 25-kilometre-long beach, there was nothing but sun and sand.
How could one of the most beautiful beaches in Asia still exist so untouched within an hour's flight of a metropolis of seven million people? This is Thailand 25 years ago, I thought, before the over-development of once-deserted gems such as Phuket and Koh Samui.
I vowed I would never tell anyone about this place for fear of ruining it.
The next day, we again rented a moped to visit the very southern tip of the island. On a road that runs inland along the island's spine, we climbed into the hills, riding through miles of protected rainforest and swimming at the base of Da Ban waterfall. Deer, monkeys, gibbons, orchids, vanilla and cinnamon are in this lush forest. We passed a tacky theme park along the way with giant concrete monkeys and fake concrete trees, then the remains of the Coconut Prison. Built by the French, it was later used by the Americans as a POW camp and, after 1975, a re-education camp. At the very southern tip of the island is the fishing town of An Thoi, where charters leave for snorkelling and scuba diving that's reputed to be the best in Vietnam.
We arrived for lunch at lovely Bai Sao Beach on the island's east coast. The area has a few fishing villages, but nothing for tourists except for a small family restaurant called Ai Xiem where we sat in the shade of a thatch beach umbrella while our young waitress brought a tiny brazier to our table in the sand and grilled tiger prawns and fresh barracuda. Then we napped in hammocks.
It had been a perfect day except for the disturbingly frequent sight of billboards advertising planned subdivisions on a massive scale. When we turned back home along the west coast road, along the southern end of Long Beach, there were even more, so recently sprouted that clusters of locals on mopeds stopped to gaze at lavish plans for future resorts and shopping centres.
Lawson had told us that direct flights from Bangkok and Phnom Penh were in the works and that two five-star resorts are slated to open on Long Beach later this year. Other projects were also under construction.
The official Vietnamese government development website outlines a depressing list of planned attractions to come, including water parks and a miniature railway into the rainforest. Foreign capital, it boasted, is pouring in. The island, like the rest of Vietnam, is poor. The jobs would be welcome.
There are places you swear you'll never publicize by writing stories about them, for fear of destroying their perfection. There are places you only tell friends about when they ask where you, as a travel writer, would go on vacation. These places are generally one and the same -- places few have heard about.
Phu Quoc is one of them. But not for long.
The billboards are signposts to a future I've seen too many times in run-away commercial development of seaside gems around the world. Writing a story about this place at this point, I realized, would make little difference except to allow a few people to see untouched Asia before it disappears.
So, that evening, I pulled out my notebook and pen and wrote as I watched the brilliant red sun sink into the ocean -- the only place in Vietnam where you can see the sun set into the sea. Along the horizon appeared a string of diamond lights, lanterns that fisherman hang above their small wooden boats to attract the squid that tomorrow would be grilled on a brazier for lunch.
Margo Pfeiff has been a travel writer and photographer for 25 years and visited about 50 countries. When she's not travelling, she lives in Montreal.
IF YOU GO
Getting to Vietnam: Cathay Pacific has excellent daily connections to Ho Chi Minh City via Hong Kong from Toronto. Weekday, low-season economy class fares from Toronto start at $1,705 plus tax, with a free stopover in Hong Kong. Cathay also offers an excellent value All Asia Pass if you want to stay on and explore more of the region. The pass is valid for 21 days (there are some blackout periods) and offers 18 Asian cities for $1,599. All Asia Passes must be booked through a travel agent. See www.cathaypacific.com/ca
Getting to Phu Quoc Island: It's a 50-minute flight from Ho Chi Minh City on Vietnam Airlines. There are several flights daily for $80 return.
Visa: At this time a visa is required for entry into Vietnam, but that is slated to change later this year. Contact the Vietnam Embassy in Ottawa for details: www.vietnamembassy-canada.ca/html/service.html or 236-1398.
When to go: The best time to visit is October through February.
Staying there:
- La Veranda Resort & Spa: A luxury resort on Long Beach slated to open mid-May. From $135 for a double bungalow. See http://www.laverandaresort.com/phuquoc.htm or call 011-84-8-8237-645.
- Mai House Resort: 14 bungalows in a tropical garden with sea views of Long Beach; $45 including buffet breakfast and airport transfer. E-mail bezardin@hcm.vnn.vn or call 011-84-77-847-003.
- Mango Bay Resort: $45 U.S. for a rammed earth bungalow and $30 U.S. for a fisherman's cottage, all with continental breakfast included. www.mangobayphuquoc.com or 011-0903-382-207.
Where to eat:
Casual dining -- generally seafood --within sight of a beach is the rule.
- Bo Resort, seven kilometres north of Duong Dong, is a small, rustic resort run by a French and Vietnamese couple. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Excellent seafood. www.boresort.com
- The Tropicana on Long Beach has very good food. http://www.northvalleyroads.com/tropicana/
- Seafood at Mai House Resort (above) on Long Beach is also excellent.
- On Bai Sao Beach, Ai Xiem is a family run seafood cafe right on the beach sand. Open for lunch and dinner.
- Excellent Vietnamese coffee in Duong Dong town is available at Cung Cafe, 51 Ba Muoi Thang Tu St.
More:
http://www.vietnam-tourism.com/vietnam_gov/e_pages/Dulich/home_dulich.htm is the official government tourism website
www.vngold.com/pq for some good panoramic views
www.virtourist.com/asia/vietnam/phu-quoc/index.html -- Phu Quoc photos
www.divevietnam.com for scuba diving
PetroVietnam to halt slump in output by starting new oil fields
Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, Southeast Asia’s third-biggest producer, plans to reverse a drop in crude oil production this year by advancing the start of operations at five fields.
Vietnamese oil production has fallen in each of the past three years as output from the biggest field slumped after more than two decades in operation. PetroVietnam has said it plans to boost domestic exploration and spend more money looking for overseas oil to meet a target of producing 20 million tons annually by 2010.
The five new fields, Su Tu Vang, Ca Ngu Vang, Phuong Dong, Song Doc and Bunga Orkid, may start production at a total of about 100,000 barrels a day later this year, Nguyen Quynh Lam, production manager, said at the conference today.
Ca Ngu Vang, or Golden Tuna, in which the U.K.-based Soco International Plc and Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Plc each have a 25 percent stake, will be the first to start on July 15, according to Lam.
Su Tu Vang, 24 percent owned by ConocoPhillips, will have the highest output of about 50,000 barrels a day once production starts in September, a month earlier than scheduled, Lam said.
PetroVietnam’s crude oil output from January to June totaled 7.2 million tons, according to a company statement today. Output fell 10 percent from 8 million tons a year earlier, Lam said.
“Output dropped due to the aging of our existing oil fields, including Bach Ho, which is more than two decades old,” said Chairman Thang.
The Hanoi-based company reported sales of 144 trillion dong ($8.6 billion), a 71 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the statement.
Sales rose after global oil prices increased, the company said. Crude oil gained 46 percent in the first half and yesterday rose to a record $145.85 per barrel.
PetroVietnam to halt slump in output by starting new oil fields
Vietnam Oil & Gas Group, Southeast Asia’s third-biggest producer, plans to reverse a drop in crude oil production this year by advancing the start of operations at five fields.
Vietnamese oil production has fallen in each of the past three years as output from the biggest field slumped after more than two decades in operation. PetroVietnam has said it plans to boost domestic exploration and spend more money looking for overseas oil to meet a target of producing 20 million tons annually by 2010.
The five new fields, Su Tu Vang, Ca Ngu Vang, Phuong Dong, Song Doc and Bunga Orkid, may start production at a total of about 100,000 barrels a day later this year, Nguyen Quynh Lam, production manager, said at the conference today.
Ca Ngu Vang, or Golden Tuna, in which the U.K.-based Soco International Plc and Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Plc each have a 25 percent stake, will be the first to start on July 15, according to Lam.
Su Tu Vang, 24 percent owned by ConocoPhillips, will have the highest output of about 50,000 barrels a day once production starts in September, a month earlier than scheduled, Lam said.
PetroVietnam’s crude oil output from January to June totaled 7.2 million tons, according to a company statement today. Output fell 10 percent from 8 million tons a year earlier, Lam said.
“Output dropped due to the aging of our existing oil fields, including Bach Ho, which is more than two decades old,” said Chairman Thang.
The Hanoi-based company reported sales of 144 trillion dong ($8.6 billion), a 71 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the statement.
Sales rose after global oil prices increased, the company said. Crude oil gained 46 percent in the first half and yesterday rose to a record $145.85 per barrel.
PetroVietnam targets 16 million tonnes of crude oil
| 15:57' 05/07/2008 (GMT+7) | ||
VietNamNet Bridge – The Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) is striving to pump out 15.5-16 million tonnes of crude oil this year in an effort to help the nation curb inflation. In the first half of this year, PetroVietnam pumped out 7.19 million tonnes of crude oil and 3.62 billion cu.m of gas. |
Friday, July 04, 2008
Downriver and Upbeat - The Mekong Delta of Vietnam - Part 2
This is the second and final part of my Mekong Delta story, continuing from the last post. Again, I apologize for the dearth of pictures.
The Vietnamese are very early risers. Things start buzzing between 5 and 6, and the market is usually the center of this activity in Vinh Long. A stroll along the narrow path between the stalls is a smorgasbord for the senses. Everything and anything one could imagine eating is here for sale, and in any state as well, from just born to freshly cooked. I see all kinds of fish, piled and stacked in tubs, some still flipping. Creatures lifted from the sea are present in all shapes and forms. There is a woman chasing down one of her frogs that has managed to escape from its bondage and hop away. I encounter a bunch of baby pigs in a metal crate poking their noses at me. Meat of all kinds is cut right here and hangs or is laid out on tables, the vendors shooing away flies. And then there are chickens. Chickens abound in every phase of life from the egg to the butchers blade. There are boxes and containers filled with yellow baby chicks, “boiled eggs “ (eggs with a little chicken in it that is eaten scooped out with a spoon), chickens tied up or in bamboo crates, and chickens being slaughtered, boiled and plucked. It all happens out in the open every morning. The sights, smells and sounds, though not for the timid, make for an entertaining and fascinating stroll. Fortunately, I am a vegetarian and I settle for fruit, biscuits and some noodles.
Pushing my luck I get back on the motorbike and head for Cantho, the unofficial capital of the Mekong delta. Along the way, something catches my eye. Telling myself it is better to stop and investigate than to pass and regret, I turn around and park the bike in front of a house. A dirt pathway leads to the front of the bamboo and wood house. A makeshift bamboo gate closes the path. Staring at me, through the gate, are two children. I throw out a polite “Hello” which results in giggles and smiles. This is exactly what I am looking for and I start taking pictures. I move a little closer and take a few more. Now the rest of the family has taken interest in this stranger. The father instructs the children to open the gate so the kids can pose proper for me, thus ruining the picture. They invite me to look around their house and once again two cultures share a brief moment with only “Hello” and “Thank you” as common language.
Once in Cantho I again head for the water and another boat ride. This time I take a Vietnamese row boat. These boats, usually operated by women, are rather small and can be seen all over the delta and throughout Vietnam. The paddler stands at the rear of the boat and uses her weight to push the boat forward. They may look small but these women are strong. No matter where I go it seems that women are always doing a greater share of the work. Anyway, it’s late in the afternoon and we head down the river as the sun begins to set. Along the banks of the river are many houses built up to and in many instances over the water on stilts. As the light fades, I can see into the houses as we pass in the water. The orange yellow glow of lights inside contrast with the blue dusk glow outside. In many houses the glow of a TV stands out sharply with the simple open bamboo and wood construction of the homes. Atop the homes the silhouettes of a jumble of TV antennas pierce the darkening sky. Even here the tube rules.
As we head back the woman rowing the boat shows me her house and asks if I would like to go to her house and meet her family. Once again confronted with gracious hospitality I accept. Inside the house, I am offered a cup of strong and pungent tea. I force myself to drink politely. The whole family is here - her children, husband, and others. The youngsters practice their few English phrases they know on me. I mimic what I hear in Vietnamese and everyone giggles. Soon an older woman and her daughter come into the house. She speaks hesitant English, “ What is your name? Where are you from?” I tell her I am American. She looks at her daughter. “She is American too, only we can’t find her father.” I look at her daughter and I understand; she is Amerasian, the daughter of an American soldier and this Vietnamese woman. The woman tells me they are trying to find the father in the U.S. so they could emigrate there. All she knows is that his name is Sam. “It was a long time ago, I don’t remember too much. I haven’t spoken English in a very long time,” she says. Her daughter, half American and half Vietnamese, is outcast and will have a hard time marrying in Vietnam. Though long gone, the aftermath of the war still lingers
On the road early in the morning, I have a long ride ahead of me from Cantho to Chau Doc near the Cambodian border. The road roughly follows the Hau Giang River, a major tributary of the Mekong. Everywhere I am surrounded by green, primarily rice fields. The rice fields are divided up into rectangular plots with walls of mud all around. These walls allow for the plot to be flooded with water before the rice is planted. By hand small rice seedlings are placed into the mud below the water. Rice fields can be seen at any stage of growth from a freshly flooded field to waist high sea of green ready to be harvested. Out in a large field I see some women working the fields, so I stop and have a closer look. To get out to where they are I have to negotiate the thin mud walls separating the plots. I find a woman who is amused by my curiosity in this everyday task. The purple shirt she is wearing makes for a wonderful contrast to the green surroundings. For a moment she gets a break to exchange hellos and to laugh at this curious looking fellow with a camera. And then she is back to work.
And I am back on the bike moving with confidence. A couple of days of riding have convinced me that I am invincible, swerving around pedestrians and women on bicycles, passing others on motorbikes with a confident wave and smile. Riding with the wind in my face I am king of the road…until a bus comes by out of nowhere with its horn blaring, nearly running me off the road. Humbled, I proceed with renewed caution. What if that bus hit me? Would I even get to a hospital? If so would the cure be worse than the affliction? I begin to realize how far away I am from the world that is so safe and familiar to me. And that’s the joy of it. Being so far away, in both distance and in culture.
And farther I went.
The midday air is hot. Fortunately the heat is tempered by the constant breeze from my motion. I realize exactly how hot it is as I stop for gas. Not being near a large town, I find that gas stations are few. Along the road in front of little food stalls or people’s homes are glass bottles filled with a clear yellow liquid. This is black market petrol. A few thousand dong (the Vietnamese currency where one dollar equals 11,000 dong) is exchanged, the gas is poured with a funnel and I am off. I ask no questions as to whose bright idea it was to store gasoline in a glass bottle.
Chau Doc was my favorite town in the Mekong Delta. Maybe because it was the farthest from Saigon. Or maybe it seemed to best fit my vision of what the Mekong delta was all about: river based communities pushed up to the water, small boats everywhere, houses on stilts jutting over the water, and floating houses built on the water with trap door openings to the fish farms underneath. It’s not that I didn’t see these things in other parts of Vietnam, but they all seemed to come together in the right proportion right here. Then again, maybe it was the wonderful an chay food stall right in the middle of the market. An chay is Vietnamese for vegetarian, and for about 75 cents I had splendid vegetarian meals of tofu and vegetables.
I hop on the public ferry and go across the river to Con Tien Island where I walk along a road lined with small wooden houses on stilts. A group of children follow me as I walk. I say “Sin chau” and they say “hello”, then I say “hello” and they say “sin chau” and everyone giggles. We repeat this giggly exchange as I wander about. Along the river side, a large family poses for me in the open part of their house as I point the camera. At the foot of the house in the river two pigs blissfully lounge in the muddy water. Further down I encounter men unloading barrels of petroleum from a boat. They roll the barrels precariously along a narrow plank of wood from boat to shore. Everywhere I go the mechanics of life play themselves out right in front of me - on the street or along the river, from the growing and processing of food and livestock, transportation of goods, to someone getting a haircut, a welder fixing a motorbike, a tailor making and mending clothing, people eating and sleeping, commerce and activity of all kinds out in the open. And I realize how shielded we are from most of these activities in the industrialized world.
Instead of taking the ferry back to town I allow a woman and her young son to take me back in a row boat. We slowly move past more houses high on stilts and a neighborhood of floating houses. The sun is low, and the light is magnificent on this side of the river. The dull gray wood of the houses has turned warm and golden. As we glide along the water, we pass other boats propelled by women in brightly colored loose fitting clothes, the long paddles gracefully raising above the water, with cargoes of produce, fish and a man with a bicycle. People pass by on the water with smiles directed at me, as the receding light adds a softness to the movement on the river. The Chau Doc side is already in shadow with a cool bluish light setting itself apart from the fading warmth across the river. For a moment, everything seems to be held together by the sheer quality of the late afternoon light.
Walking along the street that follows the river through town I see many narrow alleys paved of wood that jut out over the water connecting the houses along the water with the road. All this makes for a strange kind of neighborhood - rickety wooden pathways on stilts, no basements, just water. Boats and bicycles for vehicles. People are washing clothes or preparing and eating meals, kids are curiously following me around, desperately wanting me to point the camera at them. I really like this place. I like the simplicity, ingenuity, and functionality that it exudes. And of course the friendly welcoming smiles. Walking along one of the raised wooden sidewalks above the water I encounter a family eating dinner. The houses in this tropical climate are usually open to some degree. Privacy as we know it is virtually unknown here. They smile at my interest in them, sitting on the floor around large bowls of rice, fish and vegetables. They offer me some food, I gracefully decline and move on, chasing the remaining light.
In the evening, I eat at a small restaurant where I am befriended by the family who runs it. Yet again, there is the ever present available daughter being highlighted for me. Before I know it an older uncle who speaks English has been summoned. We talk about his fine niece and I explain that although she is nice, beautiful and charming I am not looking for a wife in Vietnam. He translates as I speak and we all smile. I ask about the war and what has happened since. He is reluctant to elaborate his feelings. They were all very kind, and we ended up playing “lotto” (similar to bingo) all night. Everyone puts in 1000 dong and whoever wins gets the pot. I was embarrassed to have had good luck that night, to the disdain of one of the older aunts who seemed to think I was playing some American trick. I was hoping that the good luck would spill over into tomorrow, when I was to make my way further out to a place called Ba Chuc where the “bone pagoda” stands in haunting memory of the atrocities perpetrated by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge.
A long and uncertain road ahead of me, I make an early start on the motorbike, hoping that the chilling place I am going to is not an omen of my ultimate fate on this two wheeled death trap. Ba Chuc is where approximately 3000 innocent civilian Vietnamese were killed by the Khmer Rouge in 1978. The Khmer Rouge also slaughtered nearly one million of their own people during this time. I venture to this place to see for myself, to make the unreal very real.
The road takes me along channels of water leading out of Chau Doc used for flooding fields of rice and for fish farming with large nets that can be lowered and raised above the water. Just outside of Chau Doc is Sam Mountain, with its many temples and pagodas, standing out in the otherwise flat terrain. The road completely encircles the small mountain. Continuing on I leave the water, rivers and canals behind. The landscape seems drier here, but maybe it’s just the heat. The road stretches out in front of me and now I can see more mountainous terrain off in the distance towards Cambodia. The land begins to resemble the images of the “Killing Fields” I remember from the movie of the same name depicting what happened in this part of Asia during the 1970’s. It is decidedly less crowded here, barren for Vietnamese standards. In this vast open landscape I see two boys on a bike. The one in the rear is dressed in the bright orange robe of a Buddhist Monk, complete with shaved head. I chase them for pictures. We are equally amused by each other’s peculiarity.
At a small village the road to Ba Chuc veers off from the paved road and becomes a dirt and at times sand road pitted with craters. I feel an eerie sense of isolation and almost dread out here. People look at me with wonder as I maneuver the rough road on my motorbike. It must be rare to see a lone traveler out here. Feeling that I must be near the Bone Pagoda I ask along the way. They point down the road and let me know with their fingers that it is about 2 kilometers. I continue down the dusty road, 3, 4, 5 kilometers. I stop again wondering if I had passed it, but no, further down the road they point. “How far?” I ask. They indicate 2 kilometers. Skeptical, I wonder if it wasn’t a mistake to have come all the way out here. OK, I think to myself, 5 Ks no more. Fortunately at about 4 Ks I have found the dreaded place.
I park the bike and with trepidation and respect I approach a monument unlike any I have seen before. Staring at me through the glass walls of the six-sided structure are hundreds, if not thousands of skulls of the slaughtered innocent. Many of the skulls are broken by what must have been deadly blows. Behind the skulls are the other bones of the dead piled up in a gruesome mass. I feel like a voyeur looking at these poor souls stacked like a pile of rocks, almost undeserving of being here as I watch some Vietnamese come to silently ponder this part of their history. Inside the pagoda is a wall of photographs, thankfully in black and white, of many murdered people, men, woman, and even children, killed in horrible ways, bodies strewn on the steps and the grounds of the very pagoda I am standing in. In this solemn atmosphere a man eerily plays a flute in the other end of the room as the smell of incense fills the air.
Standing near the monument of skulls, I can overlook a wide field where a man with an ox driven cart moves alone. In the distance I look over to Cambodia and I realize I am at my furthest point. Far off and alone in many ways, my journey from here on is a process of returning. So back along the dusty road to Chau Doc I must go; maybe another night of lotto, to Vinh Long where Khanh and a cheerful dinner of an chay food wait for me, and then back to the rumble and roar of Saigon. And I realize not only will I travel in distance, along the rivers and canals of the Mekong, but in time as well, for I will travel from a war torn and agrarian past on towards the hectic and prosperous future that belongs to this land of the mighty river.
Downriver and Upbeat - The Mekong Delta of Vietnam - Part 1
As promised, here is a piece I wrote for a magazine many years ago about my trip down the Mekong Delta in Vietnam in 1995. Unfortunately the Magazine folded before they could publish this. It’s pretty long, so I will post this in parts. I wasn’t shooting digital back then, so I only have a few images from this trip scanned right now.
It’s at least 90 degrees outside and the streets of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) are teeming and seething with all kinds of life, from prostitutes, war maimed beggars and rickshaw drivers who fought on the wrong side, to the reborn capitalists who cut joint venture deals with the legions of foreign businessmen. The pulse of this city has returned after so many years of isolation. Bright lights and bright futures, young men and women cruise the night on their new motorbikes imported from Japan. The seedy and the greedy walk the streets arm in arm towards a high-tech tomorrow of the New World Order. On this steamy night I have decided to make a trip to the decidedly less urban labyrinth of the Mekong River Delta. Known as the “breadbasket” of Vietnam, it is a rich agricultural region, crisscrossed by the mighty Mekong river and its tributaries and numerous canals. Originating high in the Tibetan plateau, the Mekong (known as the Song Cuu Long to the Vietnamese or “River of the Nine Dragons”) flows some 2800 miles to the South China Sea.
But I am still in Saigon deciding on the best way to explore the delta. I inquire to those in the know about catching a boat and working my way up the river, but I am told that this is not possible or practical given the week I have allotted. This forces me to reluctantly let go of my “Apocalypse Now” romanticism I have been holding on to for so long. Another option is the popular Minibus excursion into the delta offered by the budget hotels in town. But this is definitely out of the question for me; I have learned my lesson with group excursions on safari in Africa. Being a photographer, I cannot be constrained by group travel. Besides, being on my own gives me great opportunity to interact with the Vietnamese people. The only option left that I can afford is to get around like most everybody else in Vietnam, on motorbike. Not having much experience with motorbikes, let alone Vietnamese traffic “etiquette”, to put it nicely, madness to be more exact, this option is not without risk. But hey, I didn’t come half way around the world to see things from a mini van. So I make arrangements to rent a motorbike from a man at the shop next door to my hotel.
First thing in the morning, after haggling with the man on the price of the rental ($6/day) and who will keep my passport (I keep it, he gets my drivers license) I am ready to go. But wait, I forgot one more thing. I go back to the man and ask him for a helmet, gesturing towards my head. He laughs and says “no”. Silly me, they don’t use helmets around here, so the risk may be a little greater, well…ok, a lot greater.
Helmetless if not brainless, I get on my little Honda 100cc Dream II and am off. The streets are a dense mass of bicycles, motorbikes, cyclo rickshaws, pedestrians and a few cars, trucks and buses. As best as I can I go with the flow heading southwest towards my first stop, the river town of Mytho on the northern edge of the delta. Senses numb, body tense, and more than a little nervous, I make my way out of Saigon. Traffic becomes less dense and soon it’s me and the open road, and… what’s that up ahead? A truck passing a bus in the other lane, coming right at me with no regard for the oncoming traffic, which in this case means me! It doesn’t take me long to learn that the rule of the road here is the bigger vehicle has the right of way. But in time I get used to this and stay as far right as I possibly can. Horns are another hazard in Vietnam. Horns can be so abused that one becomes immune to the noise. It’s very important not to flinch when a large truck or bus quickly comes up from behind and suddenly lets the horn blow to signal that he is passing. My outlook on life back home begins to change some as I realize traffic in New York City is actually quite civilized.
But it’s all worth it, if just for the freedom, if not the wild stares of the Vietnamese.
I arrive in Mytho in time for lunch. A quiet place on the northern most tributary of the Mekong, I stay long enough to have something to eat and to notice a weather beaten billboard that dominates the center of town depicting the workers of Vietnam uniting in Socialist bliss. Although Vietnam is experimenting with economic reform towards a looser, market driven economy, it is still a one-party state where the Communist party rules and no one asks questions.
Back on the bike it’s off to Vinh Long, where I plan to spend the night. Along the way the road has numerous small bridges that span small tributaries or canals. These intersections are often small centers of activity with boats and commerce on or near the water. They are also spots where the temptation to look along the water as I pass on the motorbike is strong. Safety usually loses out to curiosity.
Before arriving in Vinh Long one must cross the upper Mekong by ferry, at which point it is a short ride into town. Still in one piece, I park the bike and finally get on my feet to have a look around. Naturally I head for the river. Before I get there a woman approaches me asking, in reasonable English, if I want a boat ride to the islands across the river. Since this is exactly what I had in mind I say “I don’t know.” She tells me it’s a nice boat ride to An Binh Island. We negotiate a price, about $3 an hour, and I find myself in a small motorized boat crossing the mighty Mekong river. The river is wide here so the boat traffic is not too dense. I soon realize that, unlike the woman who approached me, the driver of the boat speaks almost no English, which is, of course, perfectly reasonable in Vietnam. So we communicate the fun way, with hand gestures and simple words.
The point of the boat trip is to meander through the small channels that crisscross the island. Along the way there are small bamboo and thatch houses on stilts next to the water interspersed with small agricultural plots growing a variety of tropical fruits and rice. Many “monkey bridges”, narrow foot bridges over the channels, connect people together. Some of these “bridges” are just bamboo logs set high over the water to allow boats to pass underneath while the Vietnamese walk over these bridges without pause.
These simple bridges are a testament to the industriousness of the Vietnamese people. All over the country there seems to be not only hope but an assumption that life will not just get better in the future, but that it will get quite good. Alongside with busy-bee industriousness I found the people in the Mekong Delta to be quite friendly and genuinely interested about me, especially being an American.
Back on dry land this friendliness played itself out one evening in Vinh Long. Finishing up a meal in a small outdoor restaurant I notice a group of young women looking at me curiously from the shop next door. I admit I may be a bit curious looking, but so curious as to draw a crowd? And a crowd that is willing to just stare at me as I eat. But there they are, just looking at me. I do my best not to let this upset me or go to my head. I have been getting used to being the object of people’s stares here in Vietnam. I look at them and give out a “sin chau” (hello and goodbye in Vietnamese). They giggle and reply, but mostly giggle. Finished with my meal I move over to them. I am asked “What your name?” I reply and then am told each one of their names. And then almost as if it had been rehearsed, came the questions: “Where you from?”, “How old are you?”, and “You Married?” This is how it always happened since arriving in Vietnam. Then I would tell them I was from “My” (pronounced me ee, Vietnamese for the USA), was 33 and was happily not married, thank you. Then I would get questioned “Why you not married?” “Uh…well…I don’t know,” I mutter. Too late! Usually the prettiest single girl of the bunch is presented. In this case it was Khanh, who turned out to be the owner of the tailor shop. “You like her?” “No” doesn’t seem to be an option, so foolishly I utter “yes”. Khanh puts up token resistance, but she knows the game. We are now a pair. Khanh’s friends try to push the point with innocent haste - “You like to marry her?” Being a man, I gracefully resist the commitment. We use a Vietnamese phrase book I am carrying to try and communicate beyond this standard set of questions. I find that repeating what they say in Vietnamese results in boisterous laughter from my new lady friends. I lament, If only it were this easy in the states. By the end of the night Khanh is singing me a sweet version of Que Sera, Sera in rehearsed English. In Vietnam, karioke is king . . . and at this point, it seems so am I.
Vietnam Dong Investors Use Black Market; Traders See 18% Drop
By Patricia Lui and Wes Goodman
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnam's currency controls are forcing foreign investors into the black market to obtain dollars, aggravating declines in the world's worst-performing stock market and pushing benchmark bond yields above 20 percent.
Businesses that aren't controlled by the government pay about 7 percent more than the official rate when using the dong to buy dollars because the state gives its trading companies priority access to the U.S. currency, the World Bank said. The premium is reducing demand for the nation's stocks and bonds, according to PXP Vietnam Asset Management.
``There is clearly a shortage of dollars,'' said Kevin Snowball, a money manager at PXP Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, which oversees $117 million. ``If you have dollars and you want to buy dong, you will get the official rate, but if you have dong and you want to buy dollars it's a completely different story.''
Vietnam's financial markets are tumbling after the central bank raised interest rates three times this year to 14 percent to tame inflation that accelerated to a 16-year high of 26.8 percent in June. The economy expanded 6.5 percent in the first half, the slowest in at least seven years, while the trade deficit more than doubled to $14.8 billion.
The Vietnam Stock Index, which climbed 168 percent in the past two years as Prime Minister Dung Nguyen Tan Dung encouraged state companies to raise cash and finance expansion, slumped 54 percent since December. Yields on five-year government bonds jumped to 20.53 percent on June 13, the highest since at least July 2006, from 8.71 percent on Jan. 3.
`Currency Crisis'
The dong dropped 5 percent to 16,846 per dollar, its biggest decline since 1998. Traders are pricing in an 18 percent drop in the coming year to 20,600, according to offshore 12- month non-deliverable forwards. The contract was at 16,080 on Dec. 31. Forwards are agreements in which assets are bought and sold at current prices for future delivery. Non-deliverable contracts are settled in dollars.
The official rate will fall 6.4 percent to 18,000 by the end of the year, according to Calyon, the investment banking arm of Credit Agricole SA.
Vietnam may suffer a ``currency crisis'' similar to the slump in the Thai baht that triggered the regional collapse in 1997, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report last month.
``The central bank is not providing dollars, except to some importers and some working capital for exporters,'' said Noritaka Akamatsu, a Hanoi-based economist for the World Bank. ``That's why there is some depreciation pressure.''
The State Bank of Vietnam allows the currency to trade 2 percent either side of its daily reference rate. Gold shops and street money changers offer a black market rate of about 18,000, said Akamatsu. Banks offer a similar rate by adding fees to sell dollars, he said. The rate was as high as 19,500, he said.
Market Freeze
The dong slumped in the forwards market in May as foreign investors trapped in the bond market bet against the currency to hedge against losses, Akamatsu said.
Rajeev De Mello, who helps oversee about $600 billion as head of Asian bonds at Western Asset Management Co.'s Singapore office, sold Vietnamese bonds in April and says the market has frozen. Western Asset, part of Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc., also couldn't get a price for dong forwards, he said.
``Even when things were good, it was difficult to buy bonds in any size,'' said De Mello. ``Now when things are bad, it's impossible to either buy or sell.''
Union Investment in Frankfurt, Germany's third-biggest fund manager, forecasts a smaller decline in the dong than the forward market and is buying contracts, said Sergey Dergachev, the firm's emerging-market investor, who helps oversee the equivalent of $285 billion. Union Investment expects an 11 percent drop to 19,000 by Dec. 31.
Risk of `Overkill'
The risk is Vietnam exhausts its currency reserves of $22 billion supplying dollars or that ``overkill'' in cooling growth causes losses at state banks, said the World Bank's Akamatsu.
Pramerica Fixed Income Asia, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc., the second-biggest U.S. life insurer, is staying away.
``It's a shocking and timely reminder of problems that developing countries face,'' said Clifford Lau, a Singapore- based portfolio manager at Pramerica that oversees $7.6 billion in emerging-market debt. ``Everyone is taking a step back.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Lui in Singapore at plui4@bloomberg.netWes Goodman in Singapore at wgoodman@bloomberg.net
Vietnam's Business Briefs
VCB secures 100 mln USD loan from Italian bank
The Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank-VCB) signed a deal on a 100 million USD loan with the Intesa Sanpaolo bank of Italy on July 2.
Vietcombank Chairman Nguyen Hoa Binh said the three-year loan would contribute remarkably to the bank’s mid-term foreign currency funds to serve its development targets.
According to Binh, Vietcombank has risen its total asset to 203 trillion VND (12.3 billion USD), up by 6 trillion VND from the end of 2007. Some 5.3 billion USD of the figure were in foreign currency funds.
Intesa Sanpaolo representative said the deal was of significance in boosting trade relations between Italy and Vietnam by assisting Italian businesses to enter the Southeast Asian market.
Intesa Sanpaolo is soon to open its Hanoi representative office, the first one in Vietnam.
ANZ gets nod from Vietnam's central bank
The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group has been granted in principle approval to set up a wholly Vietnam incorporated operation.
Following the move, the bank will open at least four new outlets in Vietnam by the end of this year.
The announcement followed approval-in-principle by the State bank of Vietnam on June 25 but only released on July 2.
The approval will help ANZ compete more equally with local banks. The bank’s existing branch in Hanoi is expected to be retained.
The newly incorporated bank will help meet the needs of Vietnam’s growing population by offering more products.
These are expected to include mortgage loans, credit cards, car loans and better savings and investments.
Alex Thursby, group managing director for Asia and the Pacific, said the bank regarded expansion in Vietnam as one of its highest Asian priorities.
ANZ has 13.9 percent equity in Saigon Securities Incorporation and 10 percent stake in Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial bank (Sacombank).
ANZ entered Vietnam in 1993 and has branches in Hanoi and HCM City, and a representative office in Can Tho Province.
So far this year, Vietnam has already granted licences to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Standard Chartered Bank. About 27 other foreign banks are awaiting approval to set up wholly foreign-invested operations.
US Treasury to help VN with State bonds
The US Department of Treasury will give Vietnam technical assistance in the management and issue of State bonds and design of a secondary bond market.
The announcement was made as Nguyen Ngoc Canh, director of the State Securities Commission’s International Co-operation Department, and US Department of Treasury representative Keith Krchak met in Hanoi on Tuesday to discuss capital market development.
The commission will receive guidance on State bond market interest rate structures and methods of bond issuance, Canh said.
The Treasury Department will also provide expertise on the establishment of a secondary State bond market.
Specifically, advice will focus on transaction methods both with the primary market and within the secondary market, reporting and information announcement regulations, and how to deal with payment risks and payment duty violations.
The commission plans a secondary bond market with three component parts: a State bond market, a local government bond market and a corporate bond market, Canh said.
An official agreement on exactly what assistance will be provided is being drafted by the two sides and will be finalized in the coming months, he said.
To develop the capital market, Vietnam must cut some public spending Krchak said.
JICA helps modernize tax department
The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will help the Vietnamese Tax General Department (TGD) to implement reforms in tax policies for three years as of August 2008.
The project to this effect was signed by General Director of the TGD Nguyen Van Ninh and JICA country representative Hiroaki Nakagawa in Hanoi on July 1.
It will focus on campaigning and supporting tax payers to fulfill their duties as well as to improve tax collectors’ competence.
Vietnam, Switzerland enjoy trade development
The two-way trade value between Vietnam and Switzerland in the first four months of 2008 reached 185 million USD, surging 18.36 percent over the same period last year, the Vietnamese trade mission in the European country has reported.
In the reviewed period, Vietnam earned about 97.6 million USD from exports to Switzerland, a year-on-year increase of 10.7 percent.
Vietnam’s main staples exported to Switzerland included coffee, footwear, sea products, furniture, textiles and garments, watch components.
However, only coffee, sea products, furniture and watch components enjoyed increases in export turnover over the same period last year while other saw drops.
With its higher demands for production materials, Vietnam’s imports sharply increased, particularly medicines and chemicals, that surged by 62 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
Its total import turnover from Switzerland was 87.5 million USD, up 28.23 percent.
Switzerland by the end of 2007 had 46 valid investment projects capitalised at 720.86 million USD in Vietnam, ranking 18th among foreign investors in the country.
Quang Ngai set for 2.5 billion USD plant
The Quang Ngai Provinccial people’s Committee has sought approval from the Ministry of Industry and Trade to build a 2,400MW thermal power plant at a cost of around 2.59 billion USD in the Dung Quat Economic Zone.
The Dung Quat Thermal Power Plant, to be located in Binh Son district, will have four turbines.
While the first will be completed in 2015, all four will be in operation by 2019.
The plant will operate on oil and coal imported from Australia and Indonesia .
The Sai Gon-Dung Quat Investment and Development Joint Stock Company plans to invest and build the plant.
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According to EVN, the power production faced more difficulties in the period due to the weather conditions that much reduced the water flow to its reservoirs.
In addition, the electricity demand was likely to sharply increase as the prices of gas and petroleum have become higher than power prices.
EVN in the past six months increased its total output to 36.4 billion kWh, a 14.8 percent year-on-year increase.
It sold about 31.8 billion kWh, up 15.6 percent over the same period last year.
The corporation has put into operation two turbines in the Tuyen Quang Hydro-electricity Power Plant and the second turbines in the Dai Ninh Hydro-electricity Power Plant to add 378 MW to the national grid.
It also increased the output of hydro-electricity power plants by 25 percent to 9.4 billion kWh.
Economic zone becomes a crime zone
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The Quang Ngai Province zone, 870 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, is home to many petrochemical and heavy industry projects, including the country’s first oil refinery. Since a boom in investment last year, Dung Quat has attracted over 25,000 workers to the zone, located in a poor rural area. Local officials have said that lax personnel management on the part of companies was the main cause of trouble in the area. Statistics showed that 54 criminal cases were reported in the economic zone over the first quarter of this year, more than one per week. The cases included 44 robberies, two drug-related cases and a host of others. Additionally, 11 traffic accidents in the zone killed six and injured 11 people in the first four months of 2008. In 2007, there were 160 criminal cases reported at the economic zone, according to statistics from Dung Quat police station. That year, police arrested 38 people, pressed charges against 56 and investigated 20 cases. In a recent case, a group of workers at Post Lilama Company attacked and seriously injured two managers on June 20. Both managers were cut with knives and had fingers nearly severed. On June 21, Nguyen Van Thuong, a Lilama Company worker, was caught stealing electric wire. On June 23, company guards also found a guard for Japan’s Toyo Company, which is working on a Lilama Company project, stealing electric cable. The culprit, Nguyen Hieu, was caught red-handed at a pumping station in Dung Quat’s oil refinery. On May 1, Mai Duc Truong, a worker at Post Lilama Company, was stabbed to death by a group of workers who attacked several patrons and staff at the 24H restaurant inside the economic zone. Most of the workers are not from the area and it’s hard to manage a large number of workers, said Cao Tuan Dung, a construction site manager for Lilama 45-1 Company. “We have some 900 engineers and workers. They often hang around to drink after work. Drinking adds to the conflicts,” he said. Senior Lieutenant Phan Thanh Phuong, deputy chief of police in the economic zone, blamed the lack of security and management personnel. “We can’t control the fighting here – it’s too large an area and we lack personnel,” he said. “It’s very difficult to control the workers because they aren’t from around here and are only doing short-term work without contracts,” he said. Head of Dung Quat Economic Zone’s Management Board, Tran Le Trung, said only better management from both local authorities and companies could help solve the problem. “I suggest a broad-spectrum solution to restore security conditions here,” Trung said. “We shouldn’t leave the issue only to the police.” “The firms should raise awareness of the issue with workers and implement better labor management. “They should also cooperate with local authorities to manage the temporary residences of their workers in the area.” In a recent visit to the economic zone, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung also stressed the necessity of public order and security in the area. Dung Quat Economic Zone, transformed from an industrial park in Quang Ngai Province in 2005, has attracted several investments during recent years. In 2007, zone authorities granted 89 investment licenses worth a total of VND84.435 billion (US$5 billion) and approved another 51 projects worth VND55.652 billion ($3.3 billion) in total. Last year, the zone contributed nearly 50 percent of the provincial budget’s income, 50 percent of export turnovers and over 20,000 jobs. The zone’s Dung Quat oil refinery – the first of its kind in the country – is expected to be completed on February 2, 2009. | |||||||
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Hanoi’s Coming-Out Party
07.01.2008
Today the United States hands over the presidency of the UN Security Council to Vietnam. Exactly one week earlier, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid an official visit to the White House. This has become somewhat of an annual ritual since 2005, when Phan Van Khai became the first Vietnamese head of government to be welcomed there since the Vietnam War. Although the timing of the two events was coincidental, they show that Washington and Hanoi are growing closer—and that Vietnam is becoming a major global player. Now, it seems, would be a good time to forge stronger ties with our former adversary.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal Asia in late May, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) made the case for engaging Vietnam:
The next American president will inherit a set of alliances and friendships in Asia that are already in good shape . . . Our core alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia have never been stronger; relations with old friends in Southeast Asia like Singapore are excellent; and promising partnerships have been forged in recent years with friends like India, Vietnam and Indonesia. The next president must expand on these achievements with an ambitious, focused agenda to further strengthen and deepen these relationships. Putting our alliances first, and bringing our friends into greater partnership in the management of both regional and global affairs, is key to meeting the collective challenges we face in a changing Asia and in a changing world.
That’s sound, realist advice for Washington, where some lawmakers see Vietnam exclusively through the lens of its human-rights record. It’s also good news for Hanoi, which has come a long way since the fall of Saigon in 1975. For the better part of the two decades after the U.S. withdrawal, Vietnam was an economic basket case. Its best-known export was its woebegone citizens, millions of which risked their lives fleeing political repression and economic stagnation aboard rickety vessels—many of which ended up at the bottom of the South China Sea. But since the government abandoned collectivization for market forces in 1986, the transformation has been dramatic. Things have improved so much that many of the “boat people,” and even more of their offspring, have returned.
On the brink of famine when the Soviet Union ceased its subsidies, Vietnam is today the world’s second-largest rice exporter, second-largest coffee producer and largest exporter of robusta beans. Over the past decade, annual economic growth has averaged 7.5 percent, driven by manufacturers ranging from small textile firms to Intel’s new $1 billion semiconductor facility. And unlike their Chinese neighbors, the Vietnamese have done a fairly credible job of poverty reduction and maintaining social cohesion. For example, Vietnam’s Gini coefficient, a measure of wealth inequality, has remained steady around thirty-seven, whereas China’s, currently ten points higher, has edged upward. The explanation seems to be the sustained expansion of Vietnam’s middle class, coupled with a drop in the poverty rate to under 14 percent last year from more than 75 percent in 1990—an achievement the World Bank called “one of the most successful anti-poverty campaigns ever.” Some 90 percent of homes now have power; almost all children at least begin secondary education, with some two-thirds completing it; a national unemployment-insurance plan is due to be introduced next year.
On a macro level, the country’s currency reserves have been literally doubling by the year. There is little doubt that the government will meet its goal of turning Vietnam into a medium-income country by 2010 and probably succeed at transforming it into a modern industrial nation by a decade after that. And unlike most other industrial nations, Vietnam is not in an energy-deficit situation: the country accounts for only 1 percent of the oil demand in the Asia-Pacific region, while producing 4.5 percent of its supply in nine offshore fields (a tenth will begin production in the coming months). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the 600 million barrels of proven reserves which Vietnam is usually credited with is likely to increase significantly in coming years, since the country’s waters are relatively unexplored. The Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation (PetroViet) has begun using its earnings to diversify its position by buying modest stakes in other emerging producers.
More recently, Vietnam has begun to seek a diplomatic profile commensurate with its burgeoning economic heft. In Senate testimony earlier this year, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill described Vietnam as “increasingly influential in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).” In 2006, Hanoi hosted the APEC summit. At the beginning of 2007, Vietnam acceded to the World Trade Organization. Vietnam has also become actively involved in a wide range of issues at the UN, some quite far afield from its traditional spheres of interest. Vietnam’s UN ambassador, Le Luong Minh, even chairs the Security Council sanctions committee overseeing Sierra Leone.
In March, Hanoi broke with its traditional foreign-policy emphasis on abstaining from encroachments on the sovereignty of third-party states by voting for a new round of sanctions against Iran. A month later, in another departure from Vietnam’s past policy of noninterference, Deputy Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh called for increased financial and logistical support for peacekeeping forces in Sudan’s Darfur region and the former Somalia. Prime Minister Dung has affirmed that Vietnam is prepared to assume its place in international peacekeeping. And not only did Vietnam participate in the international donor conference for Iraq held in Stockholm in late May, its UN representatives backed the U.S.-drafted Security Council statement on the situation there during debates last month.
A year ago, I argued here that Vietnam’s new prominence presents the United States with “a unique opportunity not only to promote our ideals about free peoples and markets in a society that is opening up, but also to advance our national interests in a geostrategically pivotal region.” The private sector is already leading the way: in 2006, bilateral U.S.-Vietnam trade totaled $9.6 billion and more than seventy-five thousand Americans visited the Southeast Asian country. There are encouraging signs that some in government, especially in the Pentagon, are starting to seize the strategic initiative.
In June 2005, Vietnam signed an agreement allowing it to participate in America’s International Military Education and Training programs for the first time, subsequently receiving funds for English courses for Vietnamese military officers. In June 2007, Vietnamese observers took part for the first time in annual naval exercises organized by the U.S. Navy with six other Southeast Asian states (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). Last year, Vietnam hosted five U.S. Navy vessels, including two ships from the Seventh Fleet, the first time armed American vessels had entered the country during peacetime. Interestingly, returning home from a port call in November, two of those American ships sought refueling and refuge from an approaching storm in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor. They were denied entry by Chinese authorities.
After meeting with President Bush last week, Prime Minister Dung said his government “took note with great pleasure of rapid development in the Vietnam-U.S. relationship toward a friendly and constructive partnership, multifaceted cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect and mutual benefit.” No matter who wins in November, the next administration will need to build on this foundation, reinforcing ties with a country which was a dogged adversary in war but which, in peace, has proven an increasingly significant geopolitical actor.
J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Thailand's CP puts on hold $1.2bn plans in Vietnam
Concerns over Vietnam's steep inflation and unfavourable economic prospects have prompted Charoen Pokphand Group, the country's largest agribusiness concern, to put on hold its investment plans worth US$1.2 billion, particularly in real estate and retailing. The group would delay until next year the planned property projects and Lotus superstores in Ho Chi Minh City, Sooksunt Jiumjaiswanglerg, executive vice-president for agro-industry and food business group in Vietnam, said yesterday.
''We want to see first a clearer picture of Vietnam's foreign exchange and inflation rate,'' said Mr Sooksunt.
Inflation of Vietnam skyrocketed to 17% in the first five months of this year and shot up to 25% in May alone, resulting higher production costs and expenses.
Bank lending rates, for instance, jumped to 21%, while long-term land lease costs have surged 10 times to about one million baht per square metre or 1.6 billion baht per rai. The price hikes affect development projects that need huge space, such as department stores.
However, Mr Sooksunt insisted CP remained committed to investment plans next year, particularly in retailing.
The group plans to develop six Lotus superstores in Vietnam nationwide to capitalise on its growing population and commitment to the World Trade Organisation to liberalise its retail business in 2009.
Vietnam's population is expected to increase to 100 million within 10 years from 85 million currently.
In addition, according to Mr Sooksunt, CP has also set its sights on ventures in department stores and housing projects in Thu Tiem, the new city planned over the next five years by the Vietnamese government in the northeastern area of Ho Chin Minh City.
CP also remains committed to going ahead this year with investment plans worth over US$100 million in agribusinesses such as an animal-feed plant in Binh Duong in the South, an aquatic animal feed plant and a shrimp hatchery factory in the lower North and the central region.
One of its subsidiaries, CP Fresh Mart, has also vowed to move ahead with its investment plans.
Currently, CP Fresh Mart operates about 120 outlets in Ho Chi Minh City and a handful of outlets in neighbouring provinces. It plans to add 200 more each year.
The Vietnam operations are expected to achieve their 25% revenue growth target this year to 26 billion baht, with exports making up 4%.
CP ruled out any impact on its operations in Vietnam, as the majority of the company's products are food, which always sells regardless of economic conditions.
In addition, the Vietnamese authorities have no policy to control product prices, and raised recently civil-service salaries by 2%.
Interest rate race continues despite good liquidity
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VietNamNet Bridge – Secretary General of the Vietnam Banking Association Duong Thu Huong affirmed that banks are raising deposit interest rates because of reasons other than low liquidity. Interest rate race What would you say about the successive interest rate increases? Secretary General of the Vietnam Banking Association Duong Thu Huong, former Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam First, bankers may think that they can lend money in the interbank market. Some banks still lack liquidity a little and they need to borrow capital in the market. I feel that some bankers hope they can lend at 21% in the market. Second, some bankers thought that the State Bank would raise the basic interest rate in the context of high inflation, and they decided to raise interest rated as a move in advance. However, the State Bank has decided not to raise the basic interest rate. Third, banks have to raise interest rates because other banks are doing that. In fact, many banks do not want to offer high interest rates to attract capital, but they have to do that to retain clients. You can see that once a bank announces interest rate increases, other banks would follow immediately. Where’s the money? Have the successive interest rate increases helped mobilise capital? I feel that the capital flow to banks has not been as high as expected. Despite the high interest rates, the mobilised capital increased by several percent only in May and June As such, a big volume of money still has not been attracted to banks. Where is the money, then? It is now among people. Some people spend money to buy gold and foreign currencies to keep under their pillow. Some businesses, which have idle money, do not make bank deposits, but lend to each other. Some export companies which have foreign currencies from export deals do not sell foreign currencies to banks. Why is the money still lying outside banks, when the deposit interest rates are at very high levels? People tend to save up gold and foreign currencies because they try to protect their assets in the context of high inflation, lackluster stock market and gloomy real estate market. However, the government has been trying to tighten forex management, and I think that people will have confidence in VND. Do you think that it is a wise move to store gold and foreign currencies? People have the right to use their money in the way they want. However, it is clear that this is a big waste in using the society’s wealth. Statistics show that Vietnam has imported 43 tonnes of gold and the majority of gold is lying among people, not in circulation, which means the money does not create new value. Be smart investors Have you read the articles which warned about the risks in injecting money in gold and securities? Investors themselves decide where to inject money. However, try to be smart investors. I think that Vietnamese people are too credulous. They rush to buy or sell something on any information they hear. Those investors who make investments on rumours will lose money. What would you do now if you had a big sum of money? I would convert the money into VND and make a bank deposit to enjoy the high interest rate. |
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
ietnam sets official dong at record low
Violence continues at economic zone in Vietnam
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Le Xuan Ly suffered a laceration to his head and his finger was almost severed while Tran Van At also suffered a nearly-severed finger after a group of Post Lilama Company workers attacked the two managers at their company housing unit. “Over the last two days, they’ve even threatened to kill us at the hospital,” Ly said Monday at the economic zone’s hospital in the central province of Quang Ngai. The conflict began when Ly, the managing engineer of a construction site, accused eight of his workers for skipping shifts after check-in. On the Friday he was attacked, Ly said the workers in question had skipped work repeatedly over the last two months. Tran Van At was one of Ly’s assistants. Dung Quat Economic Zone police interrogated two of the suspects Monday. Police responded to another call from Post Lilama employees Monday morning to apprehend a group of six workers who were waiting outside the company site to ambush other workers as revenge for a deadly fight on May 1. Mai Duc Truong, a worker at Post Lilama Company, was stabbed to death by a group of workers who attacked several patrons and staff at the 24H restaurant, which is inside the economic zone. “We can’t control the fighting here – it’s too large an area and we lack personnel,” said Phan Thanh Phuong, deputy chief of police in the economic zone. “It’s very difficult to control the workers because they aren’t from around here and are only doing short-term work without contracts,” he said. Located 870 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, Dung Quat Economic Zone is home to many petrochemical and heavy industry projects, including the country’s first oil refinery. The zone has been dogged by violence and robberies for over a year. | |||||||
Vietnam grows larger summer rice crop
Prospects of a larger harvest this year prompted the government to lift a ban on rice exports last month and set a target to ship 4.5 million tonnes in the whole of 2008, similar to 2007. "The planting area under the summer-autumn rice crop in southern provinces this year is larger than last year's summer-autumn crop as food prices are at high levels, triggering farmers to expand the acreage," the General Statistics Office said in a report. It gave no output forecasts for the crop, the second-highest yielding in Vietnam after the winter-spring crop, which the report said has produced 18.03 million tonnes of paddy, up 5.9 per cent from last year's crop.
Winter-spring paddy prices have soared 90 per cent to 5,900 dong (35.7 US cents) per kg in the past year in the Mekong Delta food basket, and the summer-autumn paddy prices also jumped 89.3 per cent since last July to 5,300 dong per kg on Tuesday.
Rising rice prices have spurred farmers in several provinces to cut down fruit trees or forests of the medicinal cajuput tree, and turn the land into rice fields, the report and state television said. The general statistics office urged provincial authorities to try and halt the rush to convert fruit farms to growing rice. In the Mekong Delta, which produces more than 90 per cent of Vietnam's commercial rice, farmers have planted 1.59 million hectares (3.9 million acres) with the summer-autumn crop, or 5 per cent more than last year.
Agricultural officials have projected the summer-autumn crop to produce 10.15 million tonnes of paddy, up slightly from 10.11 million tonnes harvested in last year's crop. While the Delta's crop harvest is about to peak later this month, the government has limited rice exports to 3.5 million tonnes for the first nine months, promising to review the final export volume for 2008 when crop results are better known.
Traders said the government would give a final target for rice exports in September or early October this year. ($1=16,517 dong)
Vietnam posts economic growth of 6.5% in first half
Vietnam saw growth of 4.5 percent in agricultural production value, 16.5 percent in industrial production value, 16.5 percent in export turnovers, and 30 percent in total retail sales in the first six months of this year. Specifically, the agricultural and industrial production values were 93.1 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (5.8 billion U.S. dollars), and over 326.6 trillion VND (20.4billion dollars), respectively.
Between January and June, Vietnam lured 30.9 billion dollars worth of fresh foreign direct investment (FDI) and 661.2 million dollars worth of additional capital of operational foreign-invested projects, the statistics office said, adding that the country attracted FDI of 21.3 billion dollars in 2007.
The country, posting economic growth of 8.48 percent last year, as targeted GDP growth of 7 percent this year and 7-7.5 percent next year.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Vietnam to import 228 million tonnes of coal by 2025
The newspaper said that Vietnam will need to import large amount of coal from 2012. The yearly gap between coal demand and domestic production stood at between 10.8 million tonnes and 11 million tonnes from 2012 to 2017.
Vietnam exported nearly 32.6 million tonnes of coal in 2007. Its major importers include China, Japan, South Korea and some European countries.
A Serious Word About Mr. Dung's Dong
"I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the
With those mealy words,
Whether this act of nationwide larceny did the economy any good or not, we cannot say. It was not until after World War II that the economy fully recovered the spring in its step. And
But there is hardly an act of government so foolish or so maladroit that subsequent politicians won't provide an encore. This week, the government of Nguyen Tan Dung moved to center stage.
A year ago, the typical Vietnamese investor might have turned to the share market for safety...and growth. But Ho Chi Minh's stock exchange fell every single day in May and is down nearly 60% since January. Or, he might have bought property. Alas, the recent downturn has hit
But a year ago, the whole world was a sunnier place.
But then, the monsoons began. And nowhere have the rains come down harder than in the streets of
The Vietnamese have always admired Americans. When Ho Chi Minh declared independence for
No wonder the state bank of the Annamites handled this latest crisis just as FDR and Richard Nixon managed similar ones in the
In years past, if the
The problem for
The IMF puts average inflation worldwide at 3.9% for '07 and 4.7% for '08. But emerging markets suffer higher rates of inflation – almost 12% says the IMF. The reason for this is simple enough: emerging markets are big importers of raw materials, which they turn into finished products. And unlike the
"Vietnamese investors have taken a rational decision that this is a hedge against higher inflation and a weak dollar," said a director of Dragon Capital, based in
Until tomorrow...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
Rude Awakening
aussiejoel@the-rude-awakening
