Download - finance & business news - HKBAV · Meanwhile, at the Vietnam Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VietBank), the long-term deposit rates were even cut deeper with the strongest

24 March 2017

finance & business news

FINANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Reference exchange rate goes up 3 VND 1Exchange rate under the control despite Fed rate hike 2Going against trend, some banks cut deposit rates 3Consumer interest rates unbelievably high 3Raising interest rates may derive from banks' asset quality 5Bad debt settlement needs further acceleration 6More stringent monitoring of capital inflows into

construction and real estate sectors needed 8State Treasury mobilises $193 million in government bonds 9City remittances race to $1b mark 9SBV should offer failing banks to foreign investors 9Singapore's UOB gets nod to open wholly owned bank in Vietnam 10VietABank changes general director 11ABBANK committed to environmental responsibility 11Apec 2017: opportunities for VN's businesses 12US raises bar on seafood imports to curb illegal fishing, fraud 12VN imposes anti-dumping duties on steel from China 13Vietnam & Singapore pledge to strengthen bilateral relationship 14S'pore, Vietnam ink 6 deals to expand economic ties 15Japan announces $2 million aid for 18 projects 16Vietnam looks to expand cooperation with WIPO 17HCM City customs tariff collection target for Q1 unobtainable 17Experts: Transparency lacking in mining sector 18Vietnam suspends meat imports from Brazil 19Labour ministry eyes high-skilled labour export 19Seven businesses under health ministry go public 20Liquidation of public cars to be inspected 20Vietnam not prepared for retail market expansion 21From far and wide 22

BIZ NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Business Briefs March 24, 2017 24VN Index nears 720 points 25

Blue chips drive VN stocks back up 25Market retreats after two-day rise 26VN Index reverses Wednesday's fall 27SCIC to work with Keppel Land 27Human resources to drive industry 4.0 27US$1.3 billion in new investments approved in Binh Duong

Province 28Japanese investors shift eye to service sector 29Asean-China sea transport route opens 30Vietnam-Dutch food security cooperation to soar 30Israel introduces agri-tech to Vietnam 31HCM City partners with Israeli firms to improve business climate 31Lam Dong looks to develop local coffee brand 32Clean Vietnamese tea expected to conquer world's markets 33Vietnamese lose appetite for 'Made in China' household

electrical appliances 33Exhibition on machinery, technology to take place in Hanoi 33Thai products week 2017 kicks off in Hai Phong 34Casinos still off-limits to Vietnamese 34HCM City moves on with Saigon Safari project 35Danang wants master plan for Son Tra tourism site reviewed 35PetroVietnam projects falling Q2 oil output as low prices

weigh on revenue 36E-commerce in Vietnam is still attractive for even more

players: Tiki's CEO 37Mapletree Business Centre opened 38Isuzu Vietnam starts construction of after-sale service centre i

n HCM City 40Dacin opens sales for Vision 1 project 40Bao Viet Insurance the best workplace in non-life insurance 40Sun Group introduces new apartment block 41Rosewood to manage Vietnam resort 42

FINANCE
Reference exchange rate goes up 3 VND
24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VNA

The State Bank of Vietnam set the reference VND/USD exchange rate at 22,256 VND/USD on March 24, up 3 VND from the day ago.With the current/- 3 percent VND/USD trading band, the ceiling exchange rate is 22,915 VND per USD and the floor rate is 21,588 VND per USD.In the opening hours, commercial banks increased their rates slightly.Vietinbank listed the buying rate at 22,750 VND/USD, up 20 VND, and the selling rate at 22,820 VND/USD, up 5 VND.BIDV set its buying and selling rates at 22,755 VND and 22,825 VND, per USD, up 20 VND.Vietcombank revised its buying and selling rates up by 20 VND to 22,750 VND and 22,820 VND, per USD.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/reference-exchange-rate-goes-up-3-vnd/109182.vnp

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Vietnam finance & business 24 March 2017

Exchange rate under the control despite Fed rate hike

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VIR

After the Federal Reserve (Fed)'s move of increasing the key USD interest rate by 0.25 per cent up to a range of 0.75-1 per cent, the exchange rate on the domestic market is under control. However, Huynh Trung Minh, a financial and banking expert, told VIR's Van Linh that enterprises should be proactive in exchange rate risk hedging.What is your viewpoint on the development of VND/USD exchange rate after the Fed's adjustment?As forecasted, the Fed has recently raised the federal funds rate to 0.75-1 per cent and is predicted to have other future hikes in 2017. The next increases are expected in June and December this year. Given the increase of 0.25 per cent, the VND/USD exchange rate has showed slight fluctuations.In addition, with the aim of stabilising exchange rates, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) said it would sell foreign currency and ensure the legitimate demands of individuals and businesses. Therefore, the exchange rate will be under the control. The VND's de-preciation will be controlled at around 1-2 per cent, thanks to the stable economy, record high foreign currency reserves ($40 billion) as well as the flexible monetary pol-icies. The listed exchange rate at various banks decreased after the USD interest rate increased.What pressure will the upward trend of the greenback exert on the VND/USD ex-change rate?The US economy is expected to have better growth under the leadership of the new president, which will impact the USD. As noted by Fed chair Janet Yellen, the changes in economic policy under the Trump administration might impact the Fed's future in-terest rate adjustment plans. The upward trend of the USD price is expected to contin-ue in the medium and long terms.The market expects Donald Trump's policies in increasing spending and reducing tax-es to boost the economic growth and stimulate inflation. Therefore, they think the in-terest rate will rise in the future and this will result in strong support to the USD in the upcoming time and putting pressure on the VND/USD exchange rate.Not only Vietnam, most countries throughout the world have to deal with exchange rate fluctuations. However, the exchange rate increases due to various factors, prima-rily the seasonal factor. In addition, there are some other reasons, including concerns over the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement or the continuous increases by the Fed. But the SBV has already prepared large foreign exchange reserves. In other words, the pressure of exchange rate increase is existing but under control.What should companies do to prevent exchange rate risks?Normally, the end of the year exchange rate increases are of cyclic nature, when the payment for foreign partners is due, driving up the demand for foreign currencies. Therefore, enterprises should proactively hedge exchange rate risk via purchasing for-eign currencies in future contracts. In other words, this is a kind of exchange rate fluc-tuation insurance.Under the current context, in your opinion, are USD or VND holdings more profitable?In the short term, people who want to send their children studying abroad or seeking healthcare services would do better to keep their money in foreign currency.If there is no demand, switching to VND reserves will be more profitable. Specifically, in case of depositing VND2 billion at a bank, customers will receive more than VND10 million each month and about VND130 million for the whole year. In contrast, if hold-ing USD since the beginning of the year, they would make only VND tens of millions.Many people worry about lacking foreign currency and are flocking to purchase more. This is a favourable opportunity for speculators pushing the price on the black market. In all eventuality, there is little reason to panic.http://www.vir.com.vn/exchange-rate-under-the-control-despite-fed-rate-hike.html

Going against trend, some banks cut deposit rates

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | TRI THUC TRE

The mobilisation interest rates of some banks have risen fairly fast since the beginning of the year. Especially, some banks even offer nine percent per annum deposit rate in

Intellasia 24 March 2017 2 / 42

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order to attract capital. This is interpreted as to balance the Loan to Deposit Ratio (LDR).However, some banks have recently lowered deposit rates by 0.1-0.3 percent. Particu-larly, from March 23rd, the deposit rates at the Vietnam International Joint Stock Bank (VIB) were cut by 0.1 percent to 5.1 percent on terms of one-two months, by 0.3 percent to 5.2 percent per annum on terms from three to five months, by 0.15 percent to 5.6 per-cent per annum on terms from six to 11 months, and deposits on terms from 12 months and above declined by 0.05 percent to 7.1 percent per annum.According to representative of VIB, increasing deposit rates to attract idle money is not essential at the present time because the bank's liquidity is currently stable, and the LDR is well maintained.Similarly, Viet Capital Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VietCapital Bank) has adjusted its deposit rate list on March 21st, in which the notable point is the reduction of long terms from 18 to 60 months by 0.1 percent to 7.8 percent per annum.Meanwhile, at the Vietnam Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VietBank), the long-term deposit rates were even cut deeper with the strongest reduction of up to 0.3 percent for 15-month term, reaching 7.3 percent per annum. The deposit rates of seven and 12-month terms dropped by 0.1 percent to respectively 6.9 percent per annum and 7.1 percent per annum. The highest deposit rate of VietBank is currently 7.9 percent per annum on 36-month term.This move is considered a positive news in the context when banks have simultane-ously raised deposit rates, creating pressure to increase lending rates.

Consumer interest rates unbelievably high

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | THANH NIEN

If previously, at the electronics and motorcycles stores, financial companies providing loan services, installment selling almost did not list interest rates, then recently, be-sides products, interest rates are also shown.The first is the "flat" interest rate calculated by the monthly installment payment. The other one is the actual interest rate (due to being calculated on the original loan bal-ance) that borrowers must pay.The reason for this is since March 15, 2017, as per the regulations on consumer loans in Circular No.43 issued by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), financial companies must publicise the highest and the lowest lending rates for each consumer loan product.At a telephone shop, Mai - living in district 3, HCM City - asked to buy a laptop worth 11.49 million dong. Employee of a financial company said she needs to have an ad-vance payment of 30 percent, ID card, household registration and electricity bills, and the installment payment will be 830,000 dong/month within 12 months.As such, the interest rate is 1.37 percent/month, equivalent to 16.4 percent/annum. But if calculating on the original loan balance, the real interest rate amounts to 2.42 percent per month, or 30 percent per annum.This is the preferential interest rate for borrower having household registration and utility bills. If the borrower only has ID and driver's license, the interest rate for buying a computer at Home Credit is boosted to 4.31 percent per month, equivalent to 51.72 percent per annum, but the real interest rate amounts to 7.08 percent/month, or 84 per-cent/annum. With this interest rate, the buyer has to pay an additional 5.7 million dong for the computer.But the interest rate of 84 percent per annum is not the highest interest rate for consum-er loans now. According to a longtime activist in consumer finance sector, the highest is the 100 percent interest rate from a finance company that has large market share.When being informed about the interest rate of seven percent/month, Nguyen Hoang Minh - deputy director of the State Bank in HCM City, did not believe and asked whether the interest rate was on yearly basis or monthly basis.According to information from Minh, the lending rates of financial companies are now popular at 40 - 50 percent per annum. In fact, finance companies contributed signifi-cantly to pushing back the "black" credit, approaching consumers but the high interest rate as aforementioned caused discontents among the public in the past time.


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As per a leader of a finance company, interest rates on consumer loans are showing signs of improving compared to the previous time. "The consumer lending rates are entirely dependent on the input interest rates of financial companies. Currently, inter-est rates tend to go up. Normally, the market will have a certain lag, but interest rates will surely be lifted up in the near future", he said.At many points of sale, most financial companies do not list the highest and the lowest interest rates of each product for customers to compare. Counsellors only indicate the monthly payment, without specifying the interest rate as well as the borrower's re-sponsibilities and rights.At the same time, looking on the official website of financial companies, there hardly sees a publicised sample contract in accordance with general conditions on consumer loans as stipulated in Circular 43.On these sites, there is also no information about interest rates, but most only reflects the monthly installments. Nguyen Hoang Minh said Circular No.43 has taken effect since March 15. So far, financial companies have not reported their performance to the bank".Financial companies believe that high capital costs, high risks lead to high lending rates. But looking at the growth, especially the huge profit of these companies, we can see that the consumer loan market is a "delicious piece of cake".As per 2016 consolidated financial statement of VPBank - the mother company of FE Credit - this financial company contributed nearly one trillion dong, raising the bank's consolidated after-tax profit to more than 3.935 trillion dong, up 64 percent compared to 2015. Earlier, Home Credit attained 711 billion dong pre-tax profit, much higher than many other banks at the same time. In recent years, Home Credit also says that the growth rate is very high.It is worth saying that most of those who have to suffer this unbelievably high interest rate are poor people, students, etc. who hardly have access to other sources of credit. The statistics of Home Credit show that 50 percent of customers are workers, unskilled workers with popular loans ranging from 10 million dong to 60 million dong, payment duration ranging from one year to three years. The percentage of businesspeople only accounts for 11 percent, office workers reckons for only eight percent, technicians make up six percent, farmers represent about six percent, and the rest are people work-ing in other professions. Other big financial companies such as FE Credit, HD Saison, etc. also have the same situation.The too high interest rate burdens on customers. Cuc, who lives in My An, Binh Duong, has just finished borrowing from a financial company in order to get out of the company's constant debt collection.She said her husband's younger sister asked her to borrow 60 million dong from FE Credit, both principal and interest totalled 100 million dong paid within three years. By the 14th month when the remaining debt was 45 million dong, her husband's younger sister could not earn enough to repay the debt for the following three months.Since then, employees of financial companies call repeatedly, 5-7 times daily. Unable to stand, she came to the company to finish the loan, and the contract amounted to 51.5 million dong. "As such, borrowing 60 million dong, we have to pay a total of 111.5 mil-lion dong, almost double the loan amount. They just say the money increases due to contract liquidation fee and other expenses. Liquidating the contract but they just gives me the receipt, then promised to give me the liquidated contract, which I have been waiting and demanding for three months now", she sobbed.As per Minh, the consumer lending market is growing strongly. In 2016, consumer lending in HCM City accounted for 15 percent of the total outstanding loans, more than double from the two previous years. Lawyer Truong Thanh Duc, Head of the Vi-etnam Banking Association's Legal Club cum Chair of Basico Law Firm quoted the sta-tistics, showing that outstanding consumer loan in 2015 grew 44 percent compared to 2014, from $10.5 to $15.12 billion.Consumer lending now reckons for 10.4 percent GDP and 6.8 percent of the total out-standing loans of the economy. This shows that, more and more people have to pay


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unbelievably high interest rates", fattening" financial companies.Duc commented "The data show that consumer lending is a fertile market, with only a few consumer loan companies providing services, causing lending rates to lose com-petitiveness, interest rates among financial companies to be equally high and borrow-ers do not have many opportunities to choose from. They are forced to accept high interest rates".

Raising interest rates may derive from banks' asset quality

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | BIZLIVE

The deposit interest rates have been rising in recent days. While in short terms, the de-posit rates were raised by some banks by 0.1 percent -0.2 percent; in long terms, the interest rates were pushed up to a record high level i.e. 9.2 percent per annum.Specifically, Sacombank has launched an interest rate mobilising programme with 8.88 percent/annum for 7-year and 8.48 percent for 5-year plus one day deposit certificates. Or, LienVietPostBank also considers mobilising as much as one trillion dong through the issuance of medium and long term deposit certificates in dong across the system with the highest interest rate amounting to 8.8 percent/annum.Most recently, VPBank announced interest rates peaking 9.2 percent per annum for de-posit certificates with end-of-the-term interest payment for the amount from five bil-lion dong and 5-year duration. Other interest rates also ranged from 7.5 percent to 9.1 percent, depending on the amount of money and maturity, much higher than the 7.5 percent-7.9 percent applied previously.As per the report of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MOPI), as of February 20, 2017, credit growth of the entire banking system was 1.23 percent compared to the end of last year, almost doubled the increase of 0.65 percent in the same period of 2016.Meanwhile, on the capital supply side, the growth of total money supply reached 1.87 percent while deposit growth was 1.03 percent. It is estimated that the gap between money supply and credit demand from the beginning of the year to February 20, 2017 was about 65 trillion dong.However, excess liquidity does not occur at all banks. As estimated by experts at Bao Viet Securities Company (BVSC), the difference between money supply and credit, if excluding the net withdrawal of bond channel from the beginning of the year, remains about more than 60 trillion dong.This can be considered as a reflection of the system's liquidity and this part is, in fact, located in large scale commercial banks. At the same time, liquidity problems are more likely to occur with small and medium sized banks.It is not always easy to borrow on the interbank market for this banking group. This explains why although the system's liquidity is still relatively abundant, interbank in-terest rates have been increasing recently.Due to good credit growth from the beginning of the year, while liquidity in the bank-ing system has diversified, deposit rates have inched up slightly at many commercial banks, mainly concentrating in the group of joint stock commercial banks with small and medium scale.Dr Can Van Luc, director of BIDV Training School said deposit rates mainly increased in long terms i.e. three years, five years, and seven years. The basic objective of banks is to restructure their capital, especially medium and long term capital, to serve medi-um and long term credit growth targets as well as to meet Circular No. 06.Under this Circular, banks will only be allowed to use 50 percent of short-term capital for medium and long-term loans this year, and the ratio will fall to 40 percent in the following year.Dr Nguyen Tri Hieu also said the issuance of long-term certificates of deposits, which helps balance medium and long-term capital of banks, is reasonable.However, the expert said, raising interest rates may also indirectly derive from banks' asset quality."As a matter of fact, after a loan period, the cash flow will return to banks and banks will rotate as well as return to depositors. However, if that loan becomes bad debt, banks have to mobilise new money to pay to customers, which is the consequence of


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poor credit quality", Hieu said.The expert also noted that in the category of other assets on the balance sheet, many banks have large receivables. In essence, any bank that has a large amount of receiva-bles needs special attention because it can be bad debt that is "put on new clothes" which are the receivables or interests, fees receivable.Regarding the direction of lending rates, Dr Hieu said that the deposit rate increase will definitely affect lending rate in the near future."I think lending rates this year are unlikely to fall. Even, the interest rate increase is more likely than to remain at the current level", he said.Accordingly, Dr Hieu said that it is impossible to achieve both targets including con-trolling inflation below four percent and achieving GDP at 6.7 percent."Perhaps the government must choose one of those two priorities. To keep the dong stable, interest rates must increase to tighten the currency but that will affect the eco-nomic development. Conversely, if economic priority is given, it is necessary to push certain amount of money into circulation and push credit out by lowering interest rates".

Bad debt settlement needs further acceleration

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | DTCK

After more than three years of establishment, the Vietnam Aset Management Compa-ny (VAMC) has so far purchased a total of 25,689 bad debt items from 42 credit insti-tutions (CIs) with a total outstanding debt principal of 284.206 trillion dong. The purchase price paid by special bonds was 247.423 trillion dong.Most of the debts acquired by VAMC are secured by real estate or assets formed from loans, including properties, factories, industrial parks, projects, and corporate bonds, etc. From 2013 until now, VAMC has coordinated with CIs to recover 50.165 trillion dong bad debts by various forms such as sale of debts and sale of secured assets, reach-ing a 17.6 percent of the total outstanding debt principal.Although this ratio is limited, VAMC's Chair of the Board Member Nguyen Tien Dong said that the unit targeted to handle 150 trillion dong of bad debts by 2020, equivalent to 70 percent of the value of acquired bad debts.VAMC is currently reviewing and forming from organisational model to mechanism in order to really become a bad debt settling agency, not only for the banking sector but broadly for the economy..The main goal in dealing with bad debts is to recreate re-sources as well as lower the cost of capital to the economy. If bad debts are not un-blocked, lending rates can hardly be reduced and the capital costs will be higher than expected.According to Dong, to promote the role of VAMC, the company must have real power and mechanism to create concrete direction, and be transparent between the interests and obligations of the parties, etc.Over the years, despite the efforts, the proportion of bad debts settled by VAMC is very modest and the main responsibility of bad debt handling still belongs to banks. This issue has also been stressed by SBV's Governor Le Minh Hung that in the current difficult context, the bad debt settlement cannot be directly supported and the impor-tance is still the attempt of banks. Banks should increase risk provisioning from the at-tained profit, at the same time remove difficulties in the settlement of secured assets in order to carry out the handling of bad debts.Information gathered at banks showed that most capable banks are considering a self-settlement plan. The Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Viet-combank) at the end of 2016 withdrew all the debts sold to VAMC for self-handling. Meanwhile, leader of Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) shared that although there are certain difficulties, the bank is determined to recover the loans related to the group of six companies (G6) of Nguyen Duc Kien and increase provision for risks.Specifically, ACB aimed to fully recover the debts of G6 in 2017, instead of 2018 as in-itially planned, by setting up additional provisions. Accordingly, ACB is allowed to set aside an addition of 800 billion dong in 2016 compared to the old plan, and the new bad debt settlement roadmap will be adjusted, with recovery target reaching respec-


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tively three trillion dong and 2.016 trillion dong in 2016 and 2017.The bad debt ratio of ACB significantly fell from 1.3 percent in 2015 to 0.9 percent in late 2016, the lowest level since 2011. According to ACB, the bank will continue to use different measures to deal with bad debts in order to obtain a clean balance sheet.Of the huge volume of bad debts, there is a special type of debts, which is the debts between banks through the process of borrowing on the interbank market. For numer-ous reasons, very few banks released this number to the public. However, this is still a considerable amount of debts.ACB has two major debts at Global Petro Bank (GPBank) and Construction Bank (CBank). For the 772 billion dong debt of GPBank, in addition to the solution of issuing bonds to reduce the debts, ACB has via its subsidiary accepted two real estate projects as a deduction of debt balance, and the remaining will be settled this year by accepting the property held by GPBank.The deposit of ACB worth 400 billion dong at CBank of which the interest is overdue has been classified in debt group five - irrecoverable debts. As approved by SBV, CBank will annually pay one fifth of the amount to ACB at interest rate of two percent per annum, expected to complete on September 20th 2020. As of December 31st 2016, ACB set aside 165.63 billion dong of provisions for this item.In addition to ACB, Saigon Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SCB) also expected to com-plete the bad debt settlement plan ahead of schedule. general director of the bank Vo Tan Hoang Van said that the bank handled three trillion dong of bad debts through risk provisioning and debt recovery in 2016. SCB targeted the same amount this year. Thus, the total bad debts SCB sold to VAMC is expected to remain only above 10 tril-lion dong by the end of 2017. According to Van, at the present time, to settle bad debts there is no other way than to increase provisions, in addition to the sale of secured as-sets.A common story noted at banks is that the barriers to settle bad debts, which have re-peatedly mentioned, are not yet to be thoroughly resolved. They are the obstacles and cumbersome procedures in the process of selling secured assets. Meanwhile, Vietnam has not yet had a debt trading market for foreign investors to join. Therefore, even when the real estate market recovers, the transfer of projects and sale of secured assets still has certain difficulties.For the bad debts which are secured by land, time can help solve many problems when land prices increase. However, for other secured assets such as machinery, workshops, or even residential housing, their value declines over the time.According to an expert from a foreign investment fund, the settlement bad debts of Vi-etnamese banks has only seen bright spots from major banks with financial potential through the amount of money they provisioned for risks. However, the dark side of the picture is the tens of thousands of unnamed debts with limited value of secured assets remained. They need immediate measures because the sooner the better.Unlike the US where banks can auction, list or blockade the debts of customers when these debts are classified as bad in order to soon recover the debts, it very difficult to be done in Vietnam. Although banks of Vietnam have tried to clean up their books by accelerating the sale of bad debts to VAMC in the last four years, they still have to an-nually provision for those debts at 20 percent. Thus, after five years selling the, and it is no longer the matter for banks' operation if such debts are recoverable or not, said the above expert.In the point of Dr Le Anh Tuan, director of the Economic Research Division of Dragon Capital Group, settling the massive amount of bad debts VAMC acquired from banks occurred in the previous time is now not very much concerned as it was in two years ago, because in fact the bad debts of Vietnamese banks are mostly secured by property, while the real estate market has been recovering fairly impressively in the recent time, in both liquidity and selling prices. This has a positive impact, causing the bad debts of the banking industry to relatively decline.Once real estate prices increase and liquidity is better, banks can more easily negotiate with customers to transfer or sell the secured assets to recovery the loans. This means


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that the bad debts in some large joint stock banks have mostly been clean. Neverthe-less, Tuan believed that the bad debts of some small and weak banks remain a concern for the whole system and they need to be drastically handled.

More stringent monitoring of capital inflows into construction and real estate sectors needed

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | BAO DAU TU

Despite the warning of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), a series of banks still plunge into lending in the fields of transportation and real estate. As a result, many of them have been sitting in the fire because of increasingly clear bad debt risks.Once a very reputable and effective operator in the field of transportation, eight years ago, Thuan Thao Joint Stock Company decided make a breakthrough by turning to many fields, especially real estate.However, this painful turn caused the business to slope down with the loss of hun-dreds of billion dong. The downfall of the company made many banks worried. Cur-rently, the amount of capital that Thuan Thao owes to banks reaches nearly 750 billion dong. Nearly half of which are short-term debts that are likely to become bad debt.Not really making loss, the whole year after-tax profit at only tens of billions dong caused creditors of Quoc Cuong Gia Lai Company to feel anxiety because by the end of December 31, 2016, the due debt of this company reached nearly 1.7 trillion dong. Banks transacting with Quoc Cuong Gia Lai are mostly large state-owned banks.Similarly, another real estate tycoon - Transport Engineering Construction and Busi-ness Investment Stock Company 584 - is causing big banks to sweat as trillions of dong have not been paid. Out of more than two trillion dong that the company owes to banks, Sacombank's debts account for 1.3 trillion dong, while the rest belongs to large state-owned commercial banks.Transportation sector also makes many banks and investors disillusioned after a peri-od of eagerly pumping money to "roads". Recently, Tran Thi Thanh Tam, a board member of Tasco Joint Stock Company - an investor of many BOT projects - said that Tasco would stop investing in BOT sector because the annual rate of return is relatively low (about 11.5 percent), while the equity had been "detained" for too long.Previously, in October 2016, SHB announced stopping the financing for Hoa Lac - Hoa Binh project because the actual revenue is much lower than the financial plan offered by the investor. After a half year of pause, SHB has not continued disbursing for this project although the investor has repeatedly proposed.Loans for traffic, real estate sectors are always attractive to banks because of huge out-standing loans. Particularly with the transport sector, nearly a hundred trillion dong had been pumped out by banks. Although the wave of transportation loans has slowed down, the consequence of the previous wave of lending has pushed banks into facing booming bad debt risks. This is an inevitable consequence because many banks lend BOT projects nearly 90 percent, despite the very thin equity i.e. only about 10 per-cent, even this 10 percent is very virtual.Of course, it is impossible to deny that lending to any field has certain risk ratio. Infra-structure and real estate sectors are the foundation of economic growth. Dr Le Xuan Nghia, an economist, said that the cause of credit risk is the appraisal of competent in-vestors, and the two fields should not be considered as sinners.Many opinions said that there needs more stringent monitoring of capital inflows into this sector. Dr Nguyen Tri Hieu, a bank expert, suggested that banks set limits when participating in transportation and real estate projects in line with their capital struc-ture and have to assess carefully investor's capacity.Over the past more than year, lending to this sector has gradually been tightened by SBV. In the first directive issued in 2017 (Directive No. 01/CT-NHNN on the imple-mentation of monetary policy and assurance of safe and effective banking operations in 2017), SBV reiterated the issue.

State Treasury mobilises $193 million in government bonds

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VNECONOMIC TIMES

HNX holds auction on March 22 for bonds with tenors of five, seven and 30 years.Vietnam State Treasury (VST) mobilised more than VND4.4 trillion ($193 million) in


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government bonds on March 22.The Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) held an auction of government bonds issued by VST, with a total bidding value of VND6 trillion ($263.2 million) for three tenors: five years, seven years, and 30 years, with each calling for VND2 trillion ($87.7 million).Five-year bonds had 16 participants, with a valid bid volume of VND2.561 trillion ($112.4 million) and interest rates from 5.00 to 5.60 per cent per annum. VND150 billion ($6.58 million) was raised, with a winning yield of 5.03 per cent per annum, equal to the winning interest rate in the previous sale on March 8.Seven-year bonds had eleven participants, with a valid bid volume of VND3.201 tril-lion ($140.4 million) and interest rates from 5.34 to 5.90 per cent per annum. VND1.7 trillion ($74.6 million) was raised, with a winning interest rate of 5.43 per cent per an-num, 0.04 per cent higher than the winning rate in the previous sale on March 15.The 30-year bonds had ten participants, with a valid bid volume of VND7.603 trillion ($333.5 million) and interest rates from 7.89 to 8.4 per cent per annum. VND2 trillion ($87.7 million) was raised, with a winning interest rate of 7.93 per cent per annum, down 0.02 per cent compared to the winning interest rate in the previous session on March 15..The 30-year bond sub-session called for VND600 billion ($26.3 million), with five par-ticipants and VND2.656 trillion ($116.5 million) in valid bids, resulting in the success-ful mobilisation of VND600 billion ($26.3 million).At the end of the auction, VST had raised a total of VND4.45 trillion ($195.2 million).Since the beginning of this year, VST has successfully mobilised more than VND51.33 trillion ($2.25 billion) in government bonds via bidding on HNX.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/banking-finance/state-treasury-mobilises-193 million-in-government-bonds

City remittances race to $1b mark


Remittances to HCM City, which routinely accounts for the highest amount in the country, has topped $1 billion already this year.Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)'s HCM City office, said 58 per cent of the amount came from the US and 22 per cent from Europe.Remittances by Vietnamese guest workers abroad have not increased by much this year, he said.Remittances to the city last year fell to $5 billion from $5.5 billion in 2015.Last year more than 72 per cent of the remittances were invested in business, 21.8 per cent went into real estate and the rest to remitters' families for their use.According to the SBV's HCM City office, last year the city accounted for 57 per cent of all remittances to Vietnam, rising sharply from the 45-47 per cent that was the norm earlier.http://english.vov.vn/economy/city-remittances-race-to-us1b-mark-346191.vov

SBV should offer failing banks to foreign investors


The vigorous restructuring of "zero VND" banks whose capital is believed to have fall-en far below the minimum requirement of VND3 trillion ($140.6 million) is the main goal of the banking system this year. Dr Tran Du Lich, a financial and economic spe-cialist, told VIR's Thuy Vinh that buying out "zero VND" banks is only a temporary so-lution. It is time for the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) to stop interfering with the restructuring of "zero VND" banks.What is your evaluation of the work done so far on restructuring of the banking system in the first year of the period 2016-2020?A tough economy affected the banking system negatively. In this period, inflation was high, annual interest rate was 19-20 per cent, and some weak banks were at risk of il-liquidity. In addition, bad debts rose remarkably in 2012.In this situation, it is a requirement that the restructuring protect the banking system from the probability of bank runs. In 2016, the restructuring showed positive signals, as there were no bank runs, a lower inflation rate, mergers and acquisitions of some


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weak banks, purchasing of some weak banks at zero VND. At the same time, the bad debt rate was controlled at the threshold of three per cent in 2015.Do you mean impaired loans are no longer a big deal for the banking systems?Although the bad debt rate was controlled, there are still challenges in dealing with collaterals to collect loans.In the period of restructuring the economy from 2016 to 2020, there are five main tar-gets, including speeding up the process of bank restructuring by dealing with non-per-forming loans.Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC) had bought bad debts from 42 credit institutions with the total value of VND264.8 trillion ($11.6 billion) by the end of 2016. The total value of bonds issued by VAMC to buy bad debts was VND230.3 trillion ($10.1 billion).However, VAMC only resolved a small portion of non-performing loans it bought, so it is a responsibility of banks to increase loan loss provisions. But in reality not all banks have the ability to set aside sufficient provisions to cushion loss from bad debts.In your opinion, what measures are needed to tackle bad debts?First and foremost, it is necessary to resolve the obstacles in dealing with collaterals and establishing a debt and asset trading market. In order to do this, there should be legislation to solve the problem of collaterals. At present, banks must negotiate with debtors before selling collaterals. In case of disagreement, collaterals will not be sold. If the assets have already been collateralised, customers should follow market rules.Moreover, the procedure of liquidating assets should be simplified to deal with bad debts. It is precisely due to the difficulties of dealing with these debts that banks must trade profit for loss provision.The government issued Resolution 01/NQ-CP on January 1, 2017 on solutions to carry out the socioeconomic development plan of 2018, giving more rights for creditors to speed up collateral liquidation. Increasing liquidity of the property market may also speed up asset liquidation. Therefore, the problem of bad debts would be solved.Do you think that pushing the restructuring of the three "zero VND" banks is feasible?The restructuring of the three "zero VND" banks is the target of the banking system this year. After buying out and instructing state-owned banks to provide support, SBV should stop interfering with zero VND banks' restructuring so that foreign investors may increase their ownership to speed up the process.Buying out the three zero VND banks (Ocean Commercial One Member Limited Lia-bility Bank, Construction Bank, Global Petro Commercial Joint Stock Bank) is a tempo-rary measure to avoid bank run, which may have a negative impact on the whole system. It is now time to find long-term solutions.http://www.vir.com.vn/sbv-should-offer-failing-banks-to-foreign-investors.html

Singapore's UOB gets nod to open wholly owned bank in Vietnam

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VNEXPRESS

The bank is set to become the ninth fully foreign-owned bank in the country.Vietnam's central bank has granted initial approval for Singapore's United Overseas Bank Ltd (UOB) to open a wholly foreign-owned bank in Vietnam, Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Thursday."This is a major step forward by the Vietnamese government in creating advantages for the Singaporean bank to approach Vietnam's financial market and improve its fi-nancial services in the country," Lee was quoted in a Vietnamese government state-ment as telling reporters after meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi.UOB would still need a license to formalise the process of opening a fully-fledged bank, which would join eight other 100-percent foreign-owned banks in Vietnam. Sin-gapore is Vietnam's third largest investor.In mid-2015, Vietnam's Planning and Investment Ministry urged the government to instruct the State Bank of Vietnam, the country's central bank, to issue a license for UOB to operate a wholly foreign-owned bank in the country.Singapore is a major business partner, but does not yet have a fully-owned bank in Vi-


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etnam, while other countries, even with smaller investments, have already established such banks, the ministry said in its proposal.UOB is one of Asia's leading financial institutions with a network of 500 offices span-ning 18 countries and territories. It already operates a branch in HCM City, the coun-try's business hub.So far ANZ, Hong Leong, HSBC, ShinHan, Standard Chartered, CIMB, Public Bank Berhad and Woori Bank have opened wholly foreign-owned banks in the Southeast Asian country.In December last year, Moody's gave Vietnam's banking system a stable outlook over the next 12-18 months.Moody's said the country's macroeconomic stability and resilient economic growth will continue to support the banks' weak credit profiles.http://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/singapore-s-uob-gets-nod-to-open-wholly-owned-bank-in-vietnam-3559821.html

VietABank changes general director

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | BIZLIVE

On March 21, 2017, Le Xuan Vu was officially approved by VietABank to resign for personal reasons after a period of leave for medical treatment.Vu joined VietABank since August 25, 2016 as Acting general director, and was offi-cially appointed as general director on November 28, 2016. Before working for VietA-Bank, Vu was the deputy general director of HDBank and deputy general director of Techcombank.On the same day, VietABank appointed Nguyen Van Hao, Standing deputy general director to be the Acting general director. Hao used to hold deputy general director po-sition and has been deputy general director in charge at VietABank since July 2015 till now.Thus, VietABank's Executive Board has Hao as Acting general director and Pham Linh as deputy general director.

ABBANK committed to environmental responsibility


The An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ABBANK) has officially become a member of the United Nations Environment Programme - Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), pio-neering in response to climate change and fulfillment of social and environmental cor-poration responsibility.ABBANK has adopted the State Bank of Vietnam's directive to promote green credit growth and manage environmental and social risks in financial operations.It has integrated sustainability into its risk management and credit granting process by giving priority to projects which have no adverse environmental impacts and power-efficiency or use renewable energy and green technologies.ABBANK has an Exclusion List that defines the types of projects the bank does not fi-nance and will classify projects according to levels of their social and environmental risks.It has been offering three ODA-funded loans with strict requirements on environmen-tal protection, including Small and Medium Enterprise Finance Programme (SMEFPI-II) financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), the Rural Development Fund (RDFII) and the Vietnam - Sustainable Agriculture Transforma-tion (VNSAT)."Becoming a member of UNEP FI is significant to facilitate the green credit growth at ABBANK and in line with the national green growth strategy, an initiative to fulfill its corporate social responsibility by contributing to community and environment. More-over, this creates a foundation for product development in the future in order to in-crease the green credit portfolio at ABBANK. This helps the bank prevent the financial risk and reputational risk during the normal course of business and strengthens the brand image in the financial market in general and in this segment in particular," AB-BANK CEO Cu Anh Tuan stated.The UNEP FI is a public-private partnership between the United Nations Environment


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Programme (UNEP) and the financial sector. It seeks to encourage the better imple-mentation of sustainability principles at all levels of operations in financial institu-tions, namely through the incorporation of environmental, social and governance factors in risk analyses.Joined by over 200 institutions, including banks, insurers and investors, the UNEP FI placed great emphasis on promoting sustainable development by encouraging the in-tegration of environmental considerations into all aspects of their operations and serv-ices.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/abbank-committed-to-environmental-responsibility/109138.vnp

Apec 2017: opportunities for VN's businesses

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VGP

The participation of top regional economies and businesses in the business forums and meetings in the Apec Vietnam Year 2017 creates opportunities for all sides to advertise their potentials and share management measures to effectively join the global value chain.The information was released at a press conference briefing activities of Vietnam's businesses in Apec 2017 and the outcomes of the Apec Business Advisory Council (ABAC) Meeting 1, organised by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) on March 21.The VCCI is assigned to host events and activities related to business including the Apec Startup Forum on the sidelines of the Apec Small and Medium Enterprises min-isterial Meeting on September 13 and ABAC meeting from November 4-7.Other key events will also be held such as the fourth meeting of the Apec Business Ad-visory Council (ABAC) between November 4 and 7, the Apec CEO Summit between November 8 and 10, a Vietnam trade and investment promotion forum on November 8, and a dialogue between the ABAC and leaders of member economies on November 10.The Apec Startup Forum will discuss measures on management and methods to sup-port businesses to realise start-up initiatives.At the Apec CEO Summit, delegates will talks about global issues such as the trends of the global economy, science and technology and management.With the aim of establishing a creative government and a start-up nation, Vietnam has made progress in improving the business environment. Foreign organisations and business associations highly value Vietnam's business environment and expect to ex-pand investment in Vietnam, said President of VCCI Vu Tien Loc.Functional agencies need to provide active supports for the business environment and tackle difficulties for small enterprises to join the global value chain, said Loc.http://www.vir.com.vn/apec-2017-opportunities-for-vns-businesses.html

US raises bar on seafood imports to curb illegal fishing, fraud

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VOV

The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced the establishment of a new programme that will trace specific fish and fish products from harvest to entry into the US markets.The programme is necessary said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-tion (NOAA), an agency of the DOC, to protect the US national economy, global food security, and the sustainability of the world's shared ocean resources.NOAA Fisheries will administer the new - Seafood Import Monitoring Programme - aimed at further curbing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing practices and identifying misrepresented seafood imports before they enter the US market.The programme requires that importers report information and maintain records about the harvest, landing and chain of custody of imported fish and fish products for certain priority species identified as especially vulnerable to fishing and seafood fraud.Further, the NOAA noted that the programme will eventually expand to include all species of fish and seafood imported into the US market."As a global leader in sustainable fisheries management and seafood consumption, the


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US has a responsibility to combat illegal practices that undermine the sustainability of our shared ocean resources," said Dr Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA administrator."We designed this programme to further ensure that imported seafood is legally har-vested and truthfully represented, with minimal burden to our partners."This rule, she continued, is a critical step forward in combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing practices and seafood fraud.It sends an important message to the international seafood community that if they are open and transparent about the seafood they catch and sell across the supply chain, then the US markets are open for their business, said Catherine Novelli.Ms Novelli, who serves as the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment at the US Department of State noted that the rule will build on similar global efforts and will provide confidence to US consumers in the seafood they eat.She added that it will also level the playing field for honest fishers across the world who play by the rules.The US will use the existing International Trade Data System to collect seafood catch and landing documentation for the priority seafood species. This data system is the US government's data portal for all imports and exports.January 1, 2018, is the mandatory compliance date for most priority species listed in the rule. Implementation of these rules for farmed shrimp and abalone will be effective at a later date to be announced.NOAA and the Food and Drug Administration (a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services) have committed to working together to identify potential pathways to close these data gaps through food safety authorities at the FDA.The Presidential Task Force on Combating IUUFishing and Seafood Fraud, co-chaired by the Departments of Commerce and State, called for the formation of this pro-gramme.NOAA sought public comment for the proposed design of this programme, and the final rule reflects feedback from international partners, the fishing and seafood indus-tries, trade and consumer sectors and conservation community.The list of priority seafood species includes abalone, Atlantic cod, blue crab (Atlantic), dolphinfish (mahi mahi) grouper, king crab (red), Pacific cod, red snapper, sea cucum-ber, sharks, shrimp, swordfish, and tuna (albacore, bigeye, skipjack, yellowfin and bluefin).http://english.vov.vn/economy/us-raises-bar-on-seafood-imports-to-curb-illegal-fish-ing-fraud-345768.vov

VN imposes anti-dumping duties on steel from China

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VNS

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) on Tuesday issued a decree imposing tem-porary anti-dumping duties on H-shaped steel products imported from China.Under the Decree No 957/2017/Q-BTC, the anti-dumping duties imposed range from 21.18 per cent to 36.33 per cent and will be in effect between April 5 and August 2, 2017.H-shaped steel is used to make support beams at construction projects, girders for con-tainers and trucks, steel decks and chassis.Earlier too, on October 5, 2016, the MoIT had conducted anti-dumping investigations into H-shaped steel products imported from China (including Hong Kong).Accordingly, the steel products coded HS 7216.33.00, 7228.70.10 and 7228.70.90 were under investigation.The decision came after the MoIT's Vit Nam Competition Authority (VCA) received a petition from Posco SS Vina Company Limited saying that H-shaped steel products imported from China and Hong Kong have severely hit domestic steel producers.The dumping and damage periods that will be under investigation are from April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2016.There are five companies in Vit Nam that produce shaped steel products, but Posco SS Vina is the only producer of H-shaped steel, with an annual capacity of 700,000 tonnes.


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This makes the company eligible to represent all local H-shaped steel firms and file a lawsuit against imported products of the same type.http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/business/175174/vn-imposes-anti-dumping-duties-on-steel-from-china.html

Vietnam & Singapore pledge to strengthen bilateral relationship


PM and visiting Singaporean PM also affirm significance of maintaining peace, stabil-ity, security, safety, and maritime and aviation freedom in the East Sea.During their talks in Hanoi on March 23 following a welcome ceremony hosted by prime Minster Nguyen Xuan Phuc for visiting Singaporean prime Minster Lee Hsien Loong, the leaders of the two governments agreed that they need to strengthen strate-gic trust, boost cooperation in integration, and deepen the strategic partnership as the region confronts new challenges, and that regional and inter-regional economic con-nectivity is the foundation of promoting the recovery of the global economy.According to a report from the government Portal, PM Phuc expressed his belief that PM Lee's visit will contribute significantly to strengthening the strategic partnership between the two countries in the new circumstances.PM Lee spoke highly of the outstanding achievements Vietnam has recorded in recent years and agreed to accelerate the bilateral strategic partnership in a more substantive manner.The two prime ministers agreed to further promote political relations through the reg-ular exchange of high-level delegations of the Party, State, government and National Assembly, adding that people-to-people exchanges will be an important factor in the strong development of other fields.They highlighted the vigorously growing economic, trade and investment ties as a sol-id pillar of the bilateral strategic partnership, while affirming their efforts to promote favourable business environments and strengthen connectivity between businesses of the two countries. Lee pledged to support Vietnamese enterprises to participate further in the global market and supply chains.The two sides agreed to continue effectively implementing the Framework Agreement on Vietnam-Singapore Connectivity. Singapore will support Vietnam in developing smart cities, enhancing corporate governance capacity, and improving people's living standards. It will also share its experience and facilitate Vietnamese startups' access to capital from investment funds and boost links between major Vietnamese cities, such as Hanoi, HCM City and Da Nang, and Singapore.The two shared common views about regional peace, stability, security, safety and prosperity, pledging to accelerate bilateral security-defense ties via the exchange of high-level visits and the maintenance of consultative mechanisms as well as bilateral and multilateral activities.They expressed their concern over increasing terrorism and piracy in the region and agreed to strengthen the sharing of information and experience in the fight against ter-rorism, maritime security, and transnational crime. PM Lee affirmed his willingness to support Vietnam in building capacity in legal enforcement and anti-crime forces.The two also discussed measures to enhance cooperation in fields such as the environ-ment, tourism, science and technology, information and communications, and justice. They agreed to facilitate the exchange of labour cooperation agreements, aiming to cre-ate a legal framework for the sector.In addition to bilateral cooperation issues, the two PMs discussed international and re-gional issues of mutual concern, pledging to facilitate free trade and continue partici-pating in regional initiatives such as the Asean Economic Community, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. Both countries will continue working closely with each other as well as with other members in seeking solutions to the issues besetting the TPP. PM Lee affirmed Singa-pore's support for Vietnam during Apec Year 2017.The leaders agreed to maintain consultations and collaborate closely with each other


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and with other Asean nations to build a united, dynamic, and creative Asean and to promote the association's central role in handling strategic issues in the region, partic-ularly the East Sea issue.Vietnam and Singapore affirmed the significance of maintaining peace, stability, secu-rity, safety, and maritime and aviation freedom in the East Sea, peacefully resolving disputes in line with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), respecting diplomatic and legal processes, refraining from using or threatening to use force, fully implementing the Declaration on the Con-duct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and quickly finalising a Code of Conduct (COC) in the East Sea.PM Phuc appreciated Singapore's coordinating role in Asean-China relations and pledged to continue working closely with the country to promote Asean-China ties.After their talks, the two PMs witnessed the signing of bilateral cooperative docu-ments between ministries, localities, and enterprises from the two countries.PM Lee and his spouse arrived in HCM City on March 21, beginning a four-day official visit to Vietnam at the invitation of PM Phuc.During his stopover in HCM City, apart from other activities, he and deputy prime minister Trinh Dinh Dung attended an opening ceremony on March 22 for the Maple-tree Business Centre, the first office tower of Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd, a Singa-pore-owned real estate developer, in Vietnam.A 17-storey tower with 28,384 sq m of floor space and designed to international Grade A specifications, the Centre has attracted plenty of leasing interest and its tenants in-clude Standard Chartered Bank, Uniben, Far Eastern Polytex, and SCC UK.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/vietnam-today/vietnam-singapore-pledge-to-strengthen-bilateral-relationship

S'pore, Vietnam ink 6 deals to expand economic ties

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | STRAITS TIMES

They include plans to set up more industrial parks, subsidiary bankSingapore and Vietnam signed six agreements yesterday to expand economic cooper-ation, underscoring the growing collaboration between the two countries since up-grading bilateral ties three years ago.Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, who witnessed their signing together with Vietnam-ese prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, said he was happy that relations have strengthened through the strategic partnership."I look forward to continuing to strengthen our friendships and cooperation, as we strive to improve the lives of our people," he said at a dinner hosted by Phuc.The agreements were for cooperation in such areas as developing innovation and in-dustrial parks.Singapore was Vietnam's sixth largest trading partner in 2015 and third largest foreign investor last year. So far this year, it holds the top spot as foreign investor. Bilateral trade stood at $19.8 billion last year.At a press conference with Phuc after the signing, Lee said both prime ministers had agreed to further discuss liberalising air services, as travel between Singapore and Vi-etnam is increasing in tandem with more intensive business links and tourism. Phuc said both sides would also work closely to promote cooperation in education, training, culture and tourism, among others.Lee is on a four-day official visit to Vietnam, which ends today. It is the first time Phuc is playing host to Lee since taking on his current position in April last year.In his dinner toast, Phuc said in Vietnamese: "There is an old saying in Vietnam: A sin-gle tree doesn't make a forest. We value our friendship with Singapore and we shall protect and nurture that friendship not only for our generation, but as a legacy for those to come."Among the new agreements signed yesterday was an in-principle approval given to UOB by the State Bank of Vietnam to set up a foreign-owned subsidiary bank by June. Enhancing Singapore banks' access to Vietnam's financial markets will promote in-vestment flows and benefit both countries, Lee said, adding that he looked forward to


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the final approval.Three other agreements involved Sembcorp, such as one between the Sembcorp-Be-camex IDC joint venture and the People's Committee of Quang Tri Province to look into developing another Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in the province. There are now seven such industrial parks across Vietnam. They have attracted $9 billion (S$12.6 billion) in investments to date and employ more than 170,000 people.Lee and Phuc also discussed security issues and the South China Sea. Lee said that as Asean members, both Singapore and Vietnam share an interest in a rules-based inter-national order to resolve issues in line with international law. Phuc said both shared the view that countries in the region should work closely together to build the South China Sea into a region of peace, security and prosperity.Both agreed on the need to uphold Asean unity and centrality.Lee also invited Phuc to visit Singapore soon. Yesterday, Lee was given a welcome at the Presidential Palace, and called on Communist Party of Vietnam general Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang. He also met National Assembly President Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/singapore-vietnam-ink-6-deals-to-expand-economic-ties

Japan announces $2 million aid for 18 projects

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VNECONOMICTIMES

Projects in 15 localities in healthcare, primary education, agricultural production, bomb clearance, vocational training, and local infrastructure.The Embassy of Japan in Vietnam has announced $2 million in aid for 18 projects in 15 localities in Vietnam, as part of the Japanese government's non-refundable aid pro-gramme.Projects focus on a number of fields, including healthcare, primary education, agricul-tural production, bomb clearance, vocational training, and local infrastructure.Japanese Ambassador H.E. Umeda Kunio said that Vietnam is rapidly developing eco-nomically and becoming urbanised, but many people still don't enjoy comprehensive education and healthcare. "These projects are expected to contribute to Vietnam's sus-tainable development," he said."Localities will cooperate with relevant agencies to conduct projects effectively," said Nguyen Ba Khuyen, Chair of the People's Committee of Tan Son district, northern Phu Tho province. He also hoped that localities would continue receiving assistance from the Japanese government in the future.On March 10, the Japanese government provided $344,489 in non-refundable aid to Vi-etnam to carry out five projects in HCM City and Dak Lak, Ninh Thuan and Tra Vinh provinces.The aid is to be used to build kindergartens and water supply systems and purchase equipment for hospitals.Speaking at a press conference in Hanoi on January 16 after meeting with Vietnamese leaders, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe affirmed Japan's continued assistance to Vietnam's economic development. "For the long-term, Japan and Japanese businesses will continue to provide assistance for Vietnam's economic development," he said.At a conference held to release the "Investment Situation of Japanese Enterprises in Vi-etnam 2016" report on February 14, Atsusuke Kawada, Chief Representative of the Ja-pan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) in Hanoi, said that more than 60 per cent of Japanese enterprises in Vietnam plan to expand their business and continue to view the country as an important investment destination.Japan has become one of Vietnam's leading economic partners. It was the first G7 member to recognise it has a market economy. The two sides signed an investment agreement in 2004 and the Vietnam-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement in 2007, facilitating economic and trade links.Japan is now Vietnam's fourth-largest trading partner, with two-way trade hitting over $28.5 billion in 2015 (up 3.3 per cent against 2014) and about $26.8 billion in the first eleven months of 2016.


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According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, as at early December 2016, Japan was the second-largest investor among more than 100 countries and territories investing in Vietnam, with 3,243 projects and capital of $42 billion.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/business/japan-announces-2 million-aid-for-18-projects

Vietnam looks to expand cooperation with WIPO


Deputy prime minister Vu Duc Dam suggested the World Intellectual Property Organ-isation (WIPO) continue cooperating with and supporting Vietnam in building a na-tional strategy on intellectual property, thus creating an impetus for the country's innovation process.During a reception for WIPO director general Francis Gurry in Hanoi on March 23, the deputy PM thanked the organisation for its assistance for Vietnam in building and fine-tuning the country's legal system on IP.The WIPO also supported Vietnam in improving the capacity of agencies in protecting and exercising IP rights, developing intellectual assets, training human resources, and raising public awareness of IP, he said.He revealed that the Vietnamese government is directing ministries, sectors and local-ities to examine and propose amendments to intellectual property -- related legal reg-ulations, in order to promote innovation in the country.According to the deputy PM, ministries, sectors and localities have worked hard to im-prove the capacity and operational efficiency of agencies responsible for protecting and exercising IP rights, contributing to attracting investment in scientific and techno-logical development, towards improving business climate and increasing competitive-ness of the nation's economy.For his part, Francis Gurry reaffirmed positive results in IP-related cooperation be-tween Vietnam and the WIPO.Vietnam has set a vision in its scientific and technological development strategy, to-wards building a national strategy on intellectual property, he said.The guest stressed that the WIPO will continue helping Vietnam carry out projects to build a national IP programme, audit IP agencies' resources and management, and de-velop IP-hub for intellectual property commercialisation.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-looks-to-expand-cooperation-with-wipo/109184.vnp

HCM City customs tariff collection target for Q1 unobtainable

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | THE SAIGON TIMES

The HCM City Department of Customs has forecast export-import duty revenues would reach VND24.5 trillion (US$1.07 billion) in the first quarter, up nearly 17 per-cent year-on-year, still lower than targeted.Customs data shows export revenue in quarter one is estimated at $9.3 billion, a rise of over 10 percent compared to the same period last year, while import spending is fore-cast at $11.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than 20 percent.The city's export-import tax revenues are expected at VND24.5 trillion (US$1.07 bil-lion) in the period, up VND3.5 trillion (US$154 million), or nearly 17 percent year-on-year. Especially, tax revenues have totalled VND9.1 trillion (US$399.3 million) this month alone.However, the growth target for the year is 25 percent. The city's customs department is assigned to collect a staggering VND109 trillion (US$4.7 billion), 38.2 percent of the sector's VND285 trillion (US$12.5 billion) this year, up VND6.5 trillion (US$285.2 mil-lion) from the 2016 goal.The department said lower preferential and special consumption taxes had affected import-export duty revenues. For instance, tariffs on cars with less than nine seats im-ported from Asean have been slashed from 40 percent to 30 percent.Even though the oil price has slightly improved, tax revenues from fuel products have remained low. The figure estimated for the first three months is VND4.2 trillion (US$184.2 million), down by VND170 billion (US$7.4 million) over the same period


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last year, according to the Saigon Port customs office of Region 3 where customs clear-ance procedures for fuel importing firms are handled.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53070/HCM City-customs-tariff-collection-target-for-Q1-unobtainable.html

Experts: Transparency lacking in mining sector


The Vietnamese legal framework and policies regarding transparency in the mining sector is "fairly comprehensive", however, implementation of such policies leaves a lot to be desired, according to a study by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Indus-try (VCCI).The research on transparency compliance lamented inaccurate financial disclosures, unreliable reports on the true mine reserves throughout the country, withheld infor-mation regarding the development of and adjustments made to mining planning - es-pecially at local levels. Most of all, the level of transparency regarding the mining sector's social and environmental responsibilities for the community and the public is sorely lacking, the study found.The number of mining companies claiming they had to pay "unofficial fees" (which amounted to 2 percent of their revenues) was 12 percent higher than in other sectors, and it should be noted that these mining companies are usually far bigger."Most mining companies post bleak revenues, but the paradox is that in our survey, they also mostly said they are planning to expand production in the next two years," Nguyen Minh Duc from the VCCI's legal department, said.The report also suggests that private companies with close ties to State agencies may get first-hand information that should be made public as soon as possible, such as bid-ding notices, new ore discoveries, changes in planning, making for unfair competition.The findings were presented at a workshop in Hanoi held by VCCI and members of the Vietnam Mining Coalition.The workshop was organised against the backdrop of heated public debate over recent mining-related discoveries, such as massive illegal "sand drain" from Vietnam to Sin-gapore or threats made against a provincial leader when he ordered a halt to sand min-ing operations.According to Ministry of Finance data, natural resources taxes collected from the min-ing sector (excluding oil) account for a meagre 0.9-1.1 percent of the State budget rev-enues, which many provinces said was not even enough to cover the cost of mining activity management.Le Ai Thu, Chair of the Vietnam Economics Geology Association urged a change in the current taxing scheme. Instead of collecting natural resources and environmental tax from companies before they even start mining, the collection should be done after they have sold their products and the price has been identified. "This will leave them with more financial means to invest and upgrade technology, to dig deeper, extracting the 'poorer' ores instead of just picking the rich ores, which is actually more wasteful," he argued.Assoc. Prof Trinh Thi Kim Ngoc, former head of the humanities and culture faculty at Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, however, focused on the lives of mining area res-idents. As is often the case, mineral deposits are concentrated largely in the mountain-ous uplands of Vietnam, with their rich biodiversity but poor and vulnerable population. With the pollution from mining activities and influx of workers, "people's lives there will be heavily affected during the mining operations, and long after those operations have ended, resulting in diminishing quality of human resources," Ngoc said. "Thus, making all information publicly available will help civil society monitor and keep mining in check," she added.Lai Hong Thanh, deputy director of the general Department of Geology and Minerals, said legislation that came into effect earlier this year had remedied many long-stand-ing issues, showing that a receptive attitude on the authorities' part to address com-plaints and criticism by experts in the field, such as public information on enterprise performance of their social responsibilities, the level of public information on natural


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resources with relation to its 'national secret,' clearer bidding processes or transparen-cy in licences granting, among others.Many attempts over the last decade have been made to push for Vietnam's participa-tion in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative - a global standard to promote openness and accountability in management of extractive resources. But the efforts have not been fruitful, despite rampant and damaging violations in the mining sector, and the country is lagging behind other Asean countries in this regard.Experts in the field are calling for more commitment by the Vietnamese government to reforms in the mining sector towards transparency and sustainable development, given its dismal place in international transparency rankings. In 2013, Natural Re-source Governance Institute rated transparency in Vietnam's mining sector at 41th place in 58 countries assessed.In Vietnam, according to the constitution, natural resources "belong to the people," with the State acting as the owners' representative to manage the resources; companies are the owners' representatives for exploiting these resources, hence it's natural that the State and the enterprises divulging information to the people, an idea experts at the workshop unanimously agreed upon.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/experts-transparency-lacking-in-mining-sector/109142.vnp

Vietnam suspends meat imports from Brazil


Vietnam has suspended the imports of meat, livestock and poultry products from 21 factories of Brazil which have been under suspicion of using unhygienic substance.The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) issued a decision to tem-porarily halt the imports on March 23, asking the Department of Animal Health to closely supervise the imports from Brazil before March 23 and notify if products from those factories are found.The department was also requested to send an official notice of the decision to Brazil's authorised agencies.It will also be responsible for verifying whether Brazil can ensure the hygiene of the products and then report to the MARD.Vietnam has imported about 3,000 tonnes of meat and meat products from Brazil since the beginning of 2017, which is relatively small compared to nearly 6 million tonnes of meat that the South American country ships abroad every year.Before entering Vietnam, all meat from Brazil is kept at ports and tested. Only quali-fied meat is allowed for sale in the country, the Department of Animal Health said on March 22.Regarding the Brazilian meat already imported into Vietnam, some big supermarkets like Big C and Saigon Co.op said they do not sell beef and chicken products hailing from Brazil.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-suspends-meat-imports-from-brazil/109181.vnp

Labour ministry eyes high-skilled labour export


The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs is devising a scheme on export of high-skilled workers given the abundant domestic labour force, and thus seeking in-put from major corporations.At a working session between minister Dao Ngoc Dung and Simon Matthews, country manager of Manpower Group in Vietnam, Thailand, and Middle East on Tuesday, the two sides discussed cooperation in 2015-2018.The minister asked the group for advice on amendments to the 2012 Labour Code in regard to retirement age, overtime, minimum wage, and welfare benefits for female workers; as well as innovations in vocational education.He also sought advice on a scheme which sends well-trained labourers abroad. "The experience and knowledge which high-skilled workers gain during the working peri-od overseas will be useful for Vietnam," he said.Simon Matthews said the most important thing for investors is the availability of high-skilled labourers in their chosen country. Besides, the legal framework will protect


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workers' rights and stimulate the growth of enterprises.Therefore, the group committed to share its experience to streamline the legal frame-work for the Labour Code, and offering advice on labour training to meet market re-quirements.He added the governments of India and the Philippines have been very successful in bringing their citizens abroad for guest work. In addition to hard skills, they have trained their workers to be proficient in foreign languages, especially English.He told the Daily that Manpower has actually taken Thai and Philippine labourers abroad for guest work successfully, but the group has had a difficult time doing this for Vietnamese.The reason is that the group is a 100 percent foreign-owned company. Meanwhile, the prerequisite for receiving the certificate for export of skilled workers to work overseas on a long-term basis merely applies to Vietnamese enterprises.He said the regulation should be relaxed.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53073/Labour-ministry-eyes-high-skilled-labour-ex-port.html

Seven businesses under health ministry go public


Seven State-owned enterprises under the management of the Ministry of Health virtu-ally went public in 2011-2016, minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said.Tien unveiled the data at a review conference held in HCM City on Monday on the re-structuring of SOEs under the ministry. The enterprises are completing procedures to transform into joint stock companies in the first and second quarters of this year.The ministry is expected to turn an enterprise into a unit under the Science, Technolo-gy and Training Department. A vaccine firm is conducting its corporate valuation process and another vaccine enterprise is implementing the prime minister's instruc-tion to get production technology for 5-in-1 and 6-in-1 vaccines.The ministry still has two enterprises subject to equitisation as part of a plan to restruc-ture SOEs under its umbrella in the 2017-2020 period as requested by the government.Tien described the restructuring of SOEs as an important task in line with policies of the National Assembly and the prime minister.In related news, the Ministry of Transport has sought the prime minister's nod to halt equitisation of Nam Thang Long Hospital as well as transport hospitals in the central cities of Vinh and Danang since public health and educational facilities are not entitled to equitisation as specified by Resolution 05-NQ/TW dated November 1, 2016. The hospitals now can use their own funds to finance regular expenditures and invest-ment.Only Central Transport Hospital started to operate as a joint stock company on Janu-ary 5 last year with the involvement of strategic investor T&T Group.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53077/Seven-businesses-under-Health-Ministry-go-public.html

Liquidation of public cars to be inspected


The Ministry of Finance has asked for reports on the liquidation of State-owned cars by local governments and agencies after news reports said that used public vehicles had been sold on the cheap.Local media said the liquidation of secondhand autos at local and central agencies at an average price of VND46.2 million per unit had sparked public outrage. Therefore, the ministry has requested sanctions against those violating relevant regulations.The ministry said the liquidation process must be transparent. Those liquidating assets including cars are required to submit reports onto the national database on state assets in line with government Decree 52 issued in 2009.According to the Ministry of Finance's statistics, the total number of public cars nation-wide had amounted to 34,214 units by December 31, 2016. Last year saw local and cen-tral agencies selling 1,105 used autos, of which 761 units had been reported with a total value of VND35.15 billion, or VND46.2 million per unit.


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After data on auto liquidation surfaced, the public expressed skepticism, saying sec-ondhand cars were not that cheap.The ministry also told central and local agencies to review the use of cars donated to State agencies by businesses by March 10, 2017, and send reports to the ministry by March 31, 2017 before they are sent to the prime minister.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53076/Liquidation-of-public-cars-to-be-inspect-ed.html

Vietnam not prepared for retail market expansion

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VIETNAMNET

Vietnam has opened its retail market widely to foreign investors under WTO commit-ments and FTAs. It should not try to restrict foreign retailers' expansion, but instead support Vietnamese retailers by creating a level playing field, experts have said.Under WTO, after January 11, 2007, foreign investors can begin distribution activities if they set up joint ventures with Vietnamese partners (foreign capital contribution ra-tio must not be higher than 49 percent).Since January 1, 2008, theyhave been able to set up joint ventures in which the capital contribution ratio is up to 99.99 percent. And since January 1, 2009, they can set up 100 percent foreign owned retail chains.As such, within two years, Vietnam opened its retail market, almost half of the time it is needed to open other markets such as delivery, stock and transport services.Vietnam also set up barriers to protect its retailers. It prohibits foreign investors dis-tribute nine products and imposes ENT (economic needs test).Nevertheless, the restrictions are not applied to foreign retailers which were estab-lished in Vietnam prior to January 11, 2017.Nguyen Phi Van, chair of Retail & Franchise Asia, said the problem is that the State did not prepare a strategy to prepare Vietnamese retailers well for the market opening.Pham Chi Lan, a renowned economist, said ENT cannot protect Vietnamese retailers as expected.Loopholes in commitmentsLan said she can see many loopholes in Vietnam's commitments on market opening, which have become factors which put Vietnamese retailers at a disadvantage in the competition in the market.First, Vietnam set up ENT as a tool to prevent the rapid expansion of foreign super-market chains, but 'forgot' about convenience stores - the 50-100 square metre small shops.As a result, investors have opened 200-300 such shops throughout the country, which compete directly with petty merchants and groceries.Second, the WTO commitments and the restriction by ENT did not cover the foreign retailers which were set up prior to January 11, 2007.Third, while Vietnam prohibits foreign investors to distribute nine product items, it does not prohibit the foreign distribution of farm produce. Meanwhile, other countries in the world always try to protect their farm produce and the products made by do-mestic producers with the requirements on localisation ratios.What to do?It is now too late to try to regain the retail market with administrative orders and the restrictions on foreign retailers. What Vietnam needs to do is to create an environment for fair competition among all economic sectors and not to give preferential treatment to foreign invested enterprises and state enterprises.http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/business/174949/vietnam-not-prepared-for-retail-market-expansion.html

From far and wide 24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | VN ECONOMIC TIMES

An American millionaire, known as the Walnut King of Northern California, was ex-tremely excited about the prospect of doing business in Vietnam's cashew nut industry after a visit to southern Tay Ninh province earlier this year.His corporation, Sunrise Orchards, signed a cooperative memorandum of understand-


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ing with provincial authorities in January.He recognised that the best investment opportunity was in tropical fruit such as papa-ya, coconut, mango and guava, but the best of the best was in cashew nuts.The cashew nut industry is recording the strongest growth in the world among the many different types of nuts on offer.Figures from the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council Foundation (INC) show that global demand for nuts in general and cashew nuts in particular continues to in-crease at a stable pace, averaging 10 per cent per year.This is due to widely-distributed scientific reports noting the health benefits of cashew and other nuts.Extensive advantagesVietnam has been the largest cashew nut exporter in the world for the last eleven years, which is why the American millionaire farmer decided to select the country as the des-tination for his investment.In 2016, Vietnam accounted for about 28 per cent of processed raw cashew nut vol-umes and 42 per cent of the world's total export volumes.Vietnam's cashew nut products are now exported to 90 countries and territories around the world, as international customers recognise them as being of the best qual-ity.Vietnam exported 348,000 tonnes of cashew nuts in 2016, bringing in $2.84 billion in export turnover, up 5.6 per cent and 18.4 per cent, respectively, compared to 2015, ac-cording to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.Adding processed products and by-products (cashew shell oil etc.) export turnover reached $3.1 billion; the highest figure on record.The millionaire farmer, Raj Sharma, secured 40 ha to begin operations in Vietnam, with an initial investment of $1 million, and is expected to rapidly expand its size.He expects to soon start cashew exports from Vietnam to the US and other Asian mar-kets.India lost the tag of world's largest cashew nut exporter to Vietnam in 2006, which still possesses advantages in cashew growing areas, cheap costs, and highly-skilled work-ers compared to India, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. Meanwhile, the possibility of growing areas increasing in Vietnam's rivals is low.In particular, the Vietnamese government has encouraged attracting investment in the industry and also offers political stability."Vietnam has a large population, nearing 100 million people, which will be a consump-tion market in the future for other countries," said Nguyen Duc Thanh, Chair of the Vietnam Cashew Association (Vinacas)."The country is the best destination for processing cashew kernels for foreign investors wishing to invest in the industry."The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development expects the cashew nut industry to quickly increase productivity in order to ease its dependence on imports.The country has been dependent on raw cashew nuts, mostly from Cambodia and Af-rica, especially the Ivory Coast, for many years.Enterprises in the industry have been encouraged to restructure their models and up-grade facilities to international standards.Cashew nut processors have operated with local mechanical engineering enterprises to build Made-in-Vietnam machinery and equipment used in different stages of the production process, rather importing them from China, Italy and India at high cost.Many enterprises in India, which also has modern cashew nut processing technology, and African countries are interested in Vietnam's cashew processing technology, Thanh from Vinacas said, and many machines have already been exported."Vietnam dominates cashew kernel processing technology in the world," he said.Cashew nut exportsInvestment expandingWith such advantages, many foreign enterprises in Singapore, the US, and India have come to Vietnam in recent years and invested in the cashew industry.


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Olam International, a leading global supply chain manager and processor of agricul-tural products, arrived in Vietnam in 2000 and now has processing factories in the cen-tral and southern regions.Olam Vietnam is the largest exporter of cashew nuts, with export revenue in 2016 of $287.7 million.Rals International Vietnam Co., an Indian-invested company and one of the Top 10 largest exporters, recorded $41.9 million in cashew kernel export revenue last year.Though the number of foreign enterprises in the industry is small, Thanh said, their export revenue is substantial."I believe that the industry will no longer have any small businesses by 2020, as cashew processing factories will be operated in accordance with international standards to en-sure quality and safety," he said.Among the ten largest cashew kernel exporters in 2016, the Tan Hoa Co. has invested in modern technology for its production line to meet customer requirements.Turnover in 2016 totalled $33.2 million, from major customers in the EU and China, ac-cording to CEO Nguyen Quoc Nhu.CEO of the Long Son JSC, Vu Thai Son, told VET that the company focused on upgrad-ing their factories and enhancing machinery and equipment last year to ensure a clean working environment, as required by customers in the US and the EU."Purchase prices are good," he said."I expect export growth in 2017 of 10 per cent."The company recorded $128.6 million in revenue in 2016, making it the second-largest exporter in the industry.Last year and in 2015 it repurchased five cashew nut enterprises and plans for three of them to begin operations this year and the remaining two in 2018.Many enterprises in southern Binh Phuoc province spent tens of millions of dollars in building new processing factories and purchasing modern technology in 2016, accord-ing to Dao Thi Lanh, vice Chairwoman of the Binh Phuoc Cashew Association.Some paid attention to deep processing, though such investments remain limited.The province, known as the centre of the cashew nut processing industry, accounts for 50 per cent of volumes in Vietnam.Lanh added that cashew kernels are a key product of provincial enterprises, so ex-panding the scale of production and processing will continue into the future.Binh Phuoc now has 134,000 ha of cashew nut trees, which yield 190,000 tonnes annu-ally, with an average productivity of 1.4 tonnes per ha, while the Ivory Coast produces about 700,000 tonnes of raw cashew per year with annual productivity of 400-700 kil-ogram per hectare.Early this year, the Dan On Foods Corporation began construction of a cashew nut processing factory with a total capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year at the My Phuoc 3 In-dustrial Park in southern Binh Duong province.The subsidiary of the Canada-based Dan D Pack Group, specialising in processing products from nuts, invested $35 million in building the 60,000 sq m factory divided into three phases.Each phase is expected to have an estimated capacity of 10,000-15,000 tonnes per year when put into operation.The company owns two cashew processing plants, in Thu Dau Mot town and An Dien commune, Ben Cat district, in Binh Duong. Thanh from Vinacas said that 2017 will be a favourable year for cashew nut produc-tion and business. Exports of 360,000 tonnes of cashew kernels worth $3 billion are ex-pected this year.With positive forecasts for the industry, Son from the Long Son JSC believes his com-pany will earn $200 million in export revenue and gain higher growth once its deal selling 30 per cent of shares to a foreign partner is finalised this year.Returning to the millionaire farmer and his belief in the prospects of doing business in Vietnam cashew nut industry, Sharma is expected to not only export cashew nuts from Vietnam to California in particular and the US in general, he will also seek op-


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SVietnam finance & business 24 March 2017

portunities in China and other Asian markets.He now has sales offices in Vietnam, joining three offices in India and one in Hong Kong."With advantages in consumption markets, production and processing, China will be Vietnam's main rival in the cashew nut industry. But it will be a challenge for China to compete with Vietnam, as it holds advantages in cashew processing technology. Viet-nam has many opportunities for attracting foreign investment in the cashew nut processing industry."http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/business/175159/from-far-and-wide.html

BIZ NEWS

Business Briefs March 24, 2017

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA |

* LienVietPostBank will present the 2017 business scheme to its shareholders with pre-tax profit estimated at VND1.5 trillion, up 11 percent compared to that obtained last year. It expects to offer dividend at 12 percent for this year and expand its network to 713 districts nationwide within the next three years. The lender also plans to issue 54 million shares to spur its chartered capital from over VND6.4 trillion to VND7 trillion. The bank will issue 38.76 million shares for existing share holders at a ratio of 6 percent and offer 15.24 million shares to its staff or other investors atVNDlO,OOO each. The issuance aims to help Lien VietPostBank secure capital adequacy ratio as regulated by the central bank given its increasing asset scale, invest in facilities and upgrade the in-formation technology system.* generali Vietnam Life Insurance Company has launched the first comprehensive 2- in-1 insurance plan onto the local market. The plan VITA Bao An Toan Dien offers both savings and critical illness coverage that will protect customers against the risks of crit-ical illnesses.* Bamboo Capital Company (BCG) has decided to'transfer its entire 600,000 shares at BCG Narn Viet Energy Company atVND 10,000 each.* Phuoc Hoa Rubber Company (PHR) targets a pre-tax profit ofVND271 billion on rev-enue of VND1.36 trillion in 2017. The company plans to pay a dividend of 15 percent of the par value for 2017. PHR made an audited consolidated net profit of over VND223 billion on revenue ofVND 1.18 trillion in 2016, up 14.3 percent and down 4 percent versus the previous year.* KSH Investment & Development Company (KSH) plans to issue 1.4 million shares under an employee ownership plan (ESOP) at a 100-far-5 ratio from March 24-31, said vietstock.vn. KSH incurred a loss ofVND125.9 million on revenue of VND35 billion in 2016, compared to a net profit ofVND6.8 billion on revenue ofVNDlOO.67 billion in 2015.* Hydropower Company-Power No.3 (DRL) will spend VND10.5 billion paying the second round dividend ofVND1,100 per share for 2016. The company will make the paymenton April 24.* Nguyen Thi Kim Hoa, a board member and deputy general director ofHai Ha Con-fectionery Company (HHC), has registered to sell 225,000 HHC shares from now to April 24.

VN Index nears 720 points


Handy rebound for all main indexes on March 23 as VN Index closes just shy of 720 points.All main indexes on Vietnam's stock market closed higher on March 23.On HSX, the VN Index increased 6.62 points (0.93 per cent), the VN30-Index 11.36 points (1.68 per cent), the VNMid-Index 1.58 points (0.17 per cent), and the VNSml-In-dex 0.89 points (0.11 per cent).On HNX, the HNX-Index rose 0.13 points (0.14 per cent) and the HNX30-Index 0.78 points (0.48 per cent). The UPCoM-Index lost 0.06 points (0.1 per cent) and the

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VNALL-Index gained 11.58 points (1.12 per cent).Liquidity on HSX reached VND3.5 trillion ($153.5 million), 17 per cent lower than yes-terday, and on HNX was VND437 billion ($19.2 million), 58 per cent lower.The VN Index opened at 712.94 points and headed upwards until late in the session, reaching 718.3 points, before falling and closing the morning at 717.1 points. In the af-ternoon, it increased sharply, to 719.2 points, then remained steady to close the day at 719.56 points.In food and beverages, KDC increased 4.9 per cent, SBT 2.9 per cent, VNM 2.6 per cent, and MSN 1.1 per cent. BHN and SAB lost 4.2 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively.No large caps in banking lost ground, with STB increasing 6.1 per cent, VCB 1.5 per cent, EIB and CTG 0.8 per cent, and BID 0.3 per cent. MBB closed at its opening price.In energy, PGD and GAS rose 3.4 per cent and 0.4 per cent, while CNG lost 1.5 per cent.In real estate, VIC increased 2 per cent, DXG 1.7 per cent, and KBC 1.4 per cent. KDH closed at its opening price and NVL and FLC fell 1.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent, respec-tively.Among other large caps on HSX, BVH increased 1.2 per cent and VJC and HPG 0.8 per cent, while MWG lost 0.4 per cent.ROS saw the highest liquidity on HSX, with VND535 billion ($23.4 million), while in-creasing 0.8 per cent in price. Following was VNM, with VND286 billion ($12.5 mil-lion), and HAG with VND106 billion ($4.6 million), which rose 4.3 per cent in price.On HNX, SHB rose 2 per cent, VCG 1.2 per cent, PVS 0.6 per cent, and NTP 0.3 per cent. VNR and VCS closed at their opening price while ACB and PVI lost 0.4 per cent.Foreign investors net bought on HSX by VND257 billion ($11.3 million) and by VND15 billion ($658,050) on HNX.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/banking-finance/vn-index-nears-720-points

Blue chips drive VN stocks back up


Vietnamese shares rose on Thursday after sliding in the previous session, driven by large-cap stocks on high investor confidence.The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange increased by 0.9 per cent to close at 719.56 points, and the HNX-Index on the Hanoi Stock Exchange inched up 0.1 per cent to end at 89.9 points.The VN Index was down 0.5 per cent on Wednesday, while the HNX-Index dropped 0.4 per cent.Market trading liquidity dropped from Wednesday's level with more than 230.5 mil-lion shares being exchanged on the two local bourses, worth VND4.52 trillion (US$200.87 million).The figures were down 31 per cent in trading volume and 21.3 per cent in trading value compared to Wednesday's numbers.The stock market recovered well yesterday, with investors showing strong demand for high-priced stocks, Bao Viet Securities Corp (BVSC) wrote in its daily report. "Yester-day's gains have proved that investor confidence is very positive at the moment, espe-cially after a fall on Wednesday brought share prices back to their short-term attractive levels," BVSC said. "However, the level of 720 points will remain a difficult barrier for the VN Index."Local stocks were driven by banking-finance companies and property developers after those firms performed badly on Wednesday.Six of the nine listed banks advanced, including top large-cap banks such as Vietcom-bank (VCB), Sacombank (STB) and Sai Gon-Hanoi Bank (SHB).Other financial firms also performed well, including insurer Bao Viet Holdings (BVH), Sai Gon-Hanoi Securities Corp (SHS) and Sai Gon Securities Inc (SSI).VCB rose 1.5 per cent, SHB added 2 per cent and STB surged 6 per cent. Yesterday's gain also helped STB rally for a fourth day with a total growth of 10.7 per cent.In the property sector, Phat Dat Real Estate Development JSC (PDR) gained 2.7 per cent, Sai Gon Thuong Tin Real Estate JSC (SCR) advanced 1.5 per cent, and Vingroup (VIC) was up 2 per cent.


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In addition, the market received a strong boost from other sectors, such as food and beverage and agriculture.Those sectors were pulled up by Hoang Anh Gia Lai JSC (HAG), Hoang Anh Gia Lai Agriculture International (HNG), consumer goods producer Masan Group (MSN) and dairy company Vinamilk (VNM).http://bizhub.vn/markets/blue-chips-drive-vn-stocks-back-up_285000.html

Market retreats after two-day rise


The local stock market fell on March 22 after two consecutive rising sessions as selling pressure piled up at the 720-point resistance level.With the losing stocks far outnumbering gaining ones by 172 to 85, the VN Index lost 3.24 points, or 0.45 percent, to close at the intraday low of 712.94. Turnover on the HCM City market kept improving with nearly 269 million shares worth VND5.7 tril-lion traded, including bloc deals with the total value of VND430.4 billion.The VN30-Index also dropped 1.73 points, or 0.25 percent, at 677.96 given 10 gainers, 18 losers and two others closing at the reference prices. Large caps VNM, VIC and MSN saw their gains deeply shaved in the afternoon phase but they did save the main index from making a steep decline.Meanwhile, the banking and petroleum sectors gave the most negative contribution to the market.Having increased strongly in the session earlier, most banking stocks decreased or closed unchanged, in which VCB and CTG lost nearly 1 percent each. In the oil and gas sector, GAS declined 2.6 percent at VND53,000 per share while PGC, PGD and PVD fell from 1.7 percent to nearly 3 percent each.ROS maintained its gaining streak thanks to supporting news of its mammoth resort project announced on Tuesday, rising 0.9 percent to VND154,000 each on matching volume of 3.8 million shares. Meanwhile, FLC encountered profit taking pressure after three winning sessions in a row, ending the day at the reference price of over VND8,200 with around 54.2 million shares changing hands.Notably, HAG and its affiliate HNG went bucked the trend to hit the ceiling prices af-ter the lunch break. Both stocks then fell slightly due to selling pressures, with HAG still managing a 3.9 percent rise at nearly VND9,700 per share on volume of 14.8 mil-lion shares and HNG jumping 5.3 percent to VND11,000 each on volume of 4.9 million shares.Large caps on the Hanoi market also dragged the HNX-Index down to the intraday low at 89.77, losing 0.36 point, or 0.4 percent, versus the previous session. Trading val-ue soared to over VND1 trillion while volume leaped nearly 30 percent to 65.3 million shares.After active trading on Tuesday, ACB and SHB closed sideways with each having matching volume of 4.5 million shares. Most petroleum stocks like PVC, PVS, PGS and PVB closed in the red.HHC had the best performance, going up to the ceiling price and taking the lead for matching volume with 8.4 million shares. On the other hand, large caps VCG, LAS, CEO and HUT were among the biggest drags.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53079/Market-retreats-after-two-day-rise.html

VN Index reverses Wednesday's fall


The VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange reversed Wednesday's fall to close higher on Thursday morning, driven by banks and financial firms.The benchmark index rose 0.6 per cent to close at 717.06 points. It fell 0.5 per cent on Wednesday.More than 99.2 million shares were exchanged on the southern bourse, worth VND1.9 trillion (US$84.8 million).The banking-finance sector returned to positive territory after performing badly on Wednesday.Among the six listed banks on the southern bourse, only MBBank (MBB) was down


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one per cent, while others such as Vietcombank (VCB) and Sacombank (STB) advanced between 0.3 per cent and 2.3 per cent each.Financial companies, including Bo Vit Holdings (BVH), Sai Gon Securities Inc (SSI) and Agribank Securities Corp (AGR), made good gains to contribute to the southern market's growth.Food and beverage producers also made gains, with dairy company Vinamilk (VNM) and private equity firm Masan Group (MSN) both increasing.Hoang Anh Gia Lai JSC (HAG) and its subsidiary Hoang Anh Gia Lai Agriculture In-ternational (HNG) also gained 2.5 per cent and 6.8 per cent, respectively.On the Ha Ni Stock Exchange, the HNX Index dropped 0.3 per cent to close at 89.53 points. The northern market index fell 0.4 per cent on Wednesday.More than 22.4 million shares were exchanged on the northern bourse, worth VND276.15 billion.http://bizhub.vn/markets/vn-index-reverses-wednesdays-fall_284992.html

SCIC to work with Keppel Land


Partnership to see State Capital Investment Corporation and Keppel Land collaborate on projects in Vietnam and put Keppel Land in good stead as it expands its presence in the country, according to Keppel Land CEO.Singapore's Keppel Land signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on March 23 with the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) over cooperation in invest-ment opportunities in Vietnam.The MoU was signed in Hanoi between Ang Wee Gee, CEO of Keppel Land, and SCIC Chair Nguyen Duc Chi, and witnessed by prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Sin-gaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, who is on a four-day official visit to Viet-nam from March 21-24."Vietnam is one of Keppel Land's key growth markets and where we are committed to deepening our presence," said Ang. "We are constantly on the lookout for strategic al-liances with like-minded partners, to grow our business. This win-win partnership will see Keppel Land and SCIC collaborate on projects in Vietnam and put Keppel Land in good stead as we look towards scaling up our presence in the country."As one of Asia's premier property companies, Keppel Land is geographically diversi-fied in the region, with Singapore and China as its core markets and Indonesia and Vi-etnam as growth markets.In Vietnam, Keppel Land has developed a diverse portfolio of properties in Hanoi, HCM City, Dong Nai and Vung Tau, including Grade A offices, residential properties, integrated townships, and serviced apartments, with 20 licensed projects nationwide and a pipeline of more than 25,000 homes.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/business/scic-to-work-with-keppel-land

Human resources to drive industry 4.0


Human resources will be a key driver in manufacturing companies becoming Industry 4.0* players, experts said at a press conference held in the capital city on Thursday.The press conference was held to introduce the Vietnam Manufacturing Expo 2017 (VNM) that will be held from April 26-28.Isara Burintramart, managing director of Thailand's Reed Tradex Co., said that other drivers of the Industry 4.0 trend will be government support, data analytics and eco-nomic management."I believe that Vit Nam's workforce is ready to learn and step into the Industry 4.0 era. The best way to approach the 4.0 revolution is to do it in small steps, starting with a strategy or a pilot project," he said.Nguyen Van Thu, Chair of the Vietnam Association of Mechanical Industry, agreed, adding that the small and simple steps need to be taken immediately.Investing in human resources should be considered the most important task for local manufacturers in addition to fostering technical innovation and enhancing coopera-tion among businesses to maximise efficiency and avoid overlapping investments, he


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said.Th said a number of Vietnamese businesses, especially those in the automobile, agri-cultural machinery and design industries, have moving to Industry 4.0 with efficient investments in technological innovation.He cited as an example the comprehensive business plan of Truong Hai Auto Corp in constructing the Chu Lai-Truong Hai Automoile Mechanical Industrial Zone, which will start operations in 2018.The company has expanded investments in laser welding technology and the latest paint technology, expecting its annual capacity to reach 100,000 cars, 100,000 trucks and 5,000 buses.Other speakers at the press conference explained that Industry 4.0 refers to the 4th in-dustrial revolution, coming after the earlier waves of mechanisation of production us-ing steam power, mass production powered by electric motors and digital revolution with electroics and IT used to further automate production. The fourth revolution cre-ates the "smart factory" by "impactful orchestration of emerging technologies includ-ing the Internet of Things, the Cloud, Analytics, Robotics, 3D printing and Artificial Intelligence.The VNM 2017 will present state-of-the art technology with particularl focus on me-trology and assembling automation. It will run along with two exhibitions: Vietnam Sheet Metal and Industry Components and Subcontracting Vietnam.The expos are expected to attract over 200 leading brands, from 20 countries including Japan, South Korea Thailand Singapore and Taiwan.http://bizhub.vn/news/human-resources-to-drive-industry-40_284999.html

US$1.3 billion in new investments approved in Binh Duong Province

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | THE SAIGONTIMES

Binh Duong Province on March 22 presented investment certificates to 21 domestic and foreign projects with total capital of more than $1.3 billion.These include the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park III infrastructure development project invested by a Vietnam-Singapore joint venture with a total investment of more than $284.7 million. The project covers 1,000 hectares encompassing Hoi Nghia Ward in Tan Uyen City and Tan Lap Ward in Bac Tan Uyen District.Another project is a factory producing packages from paper, plastic and aluminum foil for liquid foods invested by Tetra Pak Binh Duong Joint Stock Company (Singapore) in VSIP II-A industrial park with registered capital of $124 million. The project has an annual capacity of 12 billion products.Meanwhile, Kolon Industries Inc. from South Korea was granted an investment certif-icate for a factory producing HMLS polyester threads as a reinforcement material for automobile tires. The $220 million project will be developed in Bau Bang industrial zone with a capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year.Tata Coffee Limited from India received a certificate for its instant coffee factory project at VSIP II-A industrial park with capacity of 660 kilos per hour and investment capital of around $63 million.Polytex Far Eastern Ltd of Taiwan, which manufactures polyester fiber and cotton spinning, got approval to increase its registered capital by $485.8 million, taking its to-tal investment in Bau Bang industrial zone in Bau Bang District to $760 million. Ac-cording to the Binh Duong People's Committee, since early this year to date, the province's authorities have approved 43 new projects with total investment capital of $793.3 million, up 204 percent against the same period of 2016. Besides, 18 existing projects have increased their registered capital by more than $550 million, up 364 per-cent in capital over 2016.As such, the total amount of newly registered and increased capital in Binh Duong has reached more than $1.34 billion so far this year, helping Binh Duong Province lead the country in foreign investment approvals. This committed capital amount increased by 250 percent compared to 2016, reaching 96 percent of this year's plan (US$1.4 billion).According to Chair of Binh Duong Province Tran Thanh Liem, the construction and development of industrial zones have met the needs of investors. Most of the projects


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are located in industrial zones and clusters in line with the orientation of attracting in-vestment as well as ensuring environmental protection in the province.Binh Duong's key sectors including power generation, electronics, mechanical engi-neering, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and commercial services have captured the inter-est of many investors.Binh Duong Province will focus on key markets such as the US, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan to call for investment in supporting industries, shoes, clothing and hi-tech projects in the province's industrial zones.The cumulative investment in Binh Duong Province has reached over $27 billion from 2,892 FDI projects, making the province the second largest FDI destination in the coun-try right behind HCM City.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53059/US$13 billion-in-new-investments-approved-in-Binh-Duong-Province.html

Japanese investors shift eye to service sector


Japanese investors have shifted their focus from manufacturing industry to service as the growing domestic market in Vietnam offers a very promising prospect for the sec-tor.Japanese investors poured money into 549 projects, both new and existing, in Vietnam last year with the number of projects in retailing and hospitality doubling that of a year earlier. By contrast, manufacturing projects accounted for only 20 percent of the total new ones, down from 30 percent in 2015.Supermarket, convenience store and shopping mall operators from Japan, such as Aeon Mall, Family Mart, Ministop and Takashimaya, have been accelerating the ex-pansion of their presence in Vietnam.Japanese investors highly appreciate the political and social stability in Vietnam; and they have turned their attention to producing consumer goods to meet rising demand in the country besides developing distribution network, said Chief Representative of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) in HCM City Takimoto Koji.It is a natural trend for a developing economy like Vietnam to move from primary sec-tors - agriculture, forestry and fishing - to the service sector, Teramoto Ryohei, a Japa-nese market researcher explained.With robust economic growth and a young population, Vietnam is an alluring market for Japan retailers, he added.The middle class in the country is explosively expanding and rising income encourag-es spending; Vietnamese consumers also favour high-quality goods and services from Japan.At the same time, the decrease in investment in manufacturing is attributable to the fact that Vietnam has become less competitive in costs of labour and input materials as the country's minimum wages have been raised over years. Moreover, local suppliers of components are only capable of meeting 20-30 percent of Japanese manufacturers' needs.To keep investors as well as attract more manufacturing projects, Vietnam should work towards improving technologies and worker skills. Experts suggested the coun-try send its workers to Japan for vocational training and put more effort to develop supporting industries.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/japanese-investors-shift-eye-to-service-sector/109114.vnp

Asean-China sea transport route opens


The first fruit-carrying ship from Asean arrived in Fangchenggang port in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on March 20, marking the official launch of a sea route for the transport of fruits between China and Asean.The new route, which connects HCM City in southern Vietnam and Fangchenggang, is operated by China's COSCO Holdings Company Limited, a subsidiary of China Ocean Shipping Company.Currently, there is one trip on the route every week but it is expected to increase to two


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or three trips by the end of 2017.Fangchenggang is a fruit port in southern China from which imported fruit will be transported by railway or road to wholesale markets in big cities in China like Beijing or Shanghai.The new route is hoped to boost Asean's export of fruits to China and is an effective way to bring China's agricultural products to Asean market.http://english.vov.vn/economy/aseanchina-sea-transport-route-opens-346121.vov

Vietnam-Dutch food security cooperation to soar


Dutch deputy minister of Agriculture speaks highly of cooperation to date during visit to Vietnam on March 22 and 23.Vietnam plays an important role in global food security as it has made progress in food security and increased production for international markets, Marjolijn Sonnema, the Netherland's deputy minister of Agriculture, said during her visit to Vietnam on March 22 and 23.Vietnam is seeing strong economic growth, she went on, but climate change is also putting major pressure on the country's agriculture sector.Vietnam and the Netherlands signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement in sustainable agriculture and food security in 2014. The partnership underlines the strong bilateral relations between the two countries that aim to develop a mutually beneficial and true partnership."Vietnam and the Netherlands are natural partners," Sonnema said. "Both are world-class players in the export of agricultural products. Both are coastal states in strategic locations. And as delta countries, we both face the challenge of climate change, espe-cially in the area of agriculture water management."High-tech agriculture is also a development focus for Vietnam in maintaining food se-curity in the years to come and the Netherlands will closely cooperate with the Viet-namese government to improve the country's agriculture sector, Sonnema emphasized. "The Netherlands has expertise, technology, and transferable skills that can serve as a catalyst for sustainable agricultural production in a middle-income country like Vietnam," she said.She also revealed that in September this year, minister of Agriculture and Rural Devel-opment Nguyen Xuan Cuong will visit the Netherlands for a more in-depth exchange of agricultural strategic cooperation, to further promote food security cooperation.During her visit, Sonnema was accompanied by a business delegation that was a mix of companies that are new to Vietnam and those that have prior experience of doing business in the country. Most have concrete business plans and invested time and money to be part of the visit.The visit took place on the occasion of Asean+6 regional Food Security Conference, en-titled "Let's Get to Work - Building a Food Secure Future". The conference was hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development together with the Netherlands' Ministry of Economic Affairs.The conference was a direct result of close cooperation in the area of sustainable agri-culture and food security, focusing on reducing food waste and food losses in order to find new solutions for meeting Sustainable Development Goals.Numerous deals and agreements were made after the event, enhancing economic ties between the two countries with a view to sharing the vision of a sustainable future where economies thrive and the environment is fully maintained. Vietnam and the Netherlands will continue to boost their food security cooperation in the future.Important signings between Vietnam and the Netherlands:- Signing of food security deals during the Food Security Conference. As a concrete outcome, Vietnam and the Netherlands have started two projects in the development of Sustainable Aquaculture Competition and a Post-Harvest Network in Vietnam.- Signing ceremony between Agriterra, a Dutch development organisation, and the Vi-etnam Cooperation Association on the development of agricultural cooperation in Vi-etnam.


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- Signing of an MoU between De Heus and the Minh Phu Corp. on strategic coopera-tion for the development of organic shrimp feeding, farming, and processing in Viet-nam.- Signing of an MoU between the Control Union and the Institute of Organic Agricul-tural Economics for cooperating on introducing and certifying international standards to develop the agricultural value chain in Vietnam. Signing of an MoU between FabMax, TU Delft, and Saigon High Tech Park Labs for cooperation in preparing and supporting the engineering team at SHTP Labs in the de-velopment of their plans for the production and selling of FET power devices in Viet-nam.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/vietnam-today/vietnam-dutch-food-security-co-operation-to-soar

Israel introduces agri-tech to Vietnam


Israel, world-known for advanced farming technology, wants to transfer modern tech-nology to Vietnamese agricultural firms.According to a seminar Israel's agricultural technology held in Hanoi on Tuesday as part of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin's Vietnam visit, Israelis working in the agricul-tural sector make up a mere 3.7 percent of the total workforce but meet 95 percent of the country's food needs as Israel is a world leader in agricultural technology.Israeli has a highly developed agricultural sector. Deserts account for more than half Israel's area, so it has extreme climate conditions and lacks water. However, domestic suppliers can meet 95 percent of Israel's grain, oil seeds, meat, coffee, cocoa and sugar needs.Deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Le Quoc Doanh said Vietnam's agriculture is facing many challenges such as climate change, drought, sa-linity intrusion and floods. Meanwhile, the country's deeper integration in the world economy has exposed the agricultural sector to greater international competition.MARD is carrying out an agricultural restructuring plan which will prioritise adding more value to farm produce and applying advanced technology. "Therefore, Israel's experience and high technology can help boost the efficiency of Vietnam's agriculture," said Doanh.Since an agricultural cooperation agreement was signed in 1997, Israel has assisted Vi-etnam to carry out many projects and transferred technology for livestock farming, cultivation and irrigation.On the sidelines of the seminar, many Vietnamese firms met potential Israeli partners to learn about Israeli advanced technology and products and sound out cooperation prospects.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53074/Israel-introduces-agri-tech-to-Vietnam.html

HCM City partners with Israeli firms to improve business climate


Chair of the HCM City People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong committed to keep-ing partnering with Israeli firms operating in the city to improve its business climate during a business forum held in the city on March 23.In his speech, Phong spoke highly of Israel's technology and management experience and believed that HCM City, which boasts abundant workforce and great potential, would become a promising partner of the Middle East country, contributing to their mutual development in the near future.Lauding trade and investment ties between Israel and the city, Phong vowed to offer all possible support to Israeli visitors, businesses and investors to the city to seek part-nership opportunities.Vietnam, including HCM City, and Israel are not competitive markets but develop-ment partners supporting mutual development on the basis of cooperation potential, common friendship and prosperity, he stressed.Israeli President Reuven Ruvi Rivlin, for his part, hailed the growing trade ties be-tween the two countries over the past years, adding that there is room for its further


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growth not only in commodity trade but also technical know-how in water resources management, milk industry, medical equipment and education.While recalling Israel's path to becoming a start-up nation, he expressed his belief that Vietnam, on the back of its long-standing history and young population, will work closely with Israeli people to bring benefits to the two countries and the world.At the event co-hosted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Israeli embassy in Vietnam, the two leaders witnessed the signing of a Memo-randum of Understanding on research and development cooperation between the Is-rael Innovation Authority and the National Technology Innovation Fund.Nearly 500 participating Vietnamese and Israeli enterprises sought to boost trade and investment in hi-tech agriculture, information technology and communications, water resources management and green energy.Earlier, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a 200 million USD financial pack-age in health care between Israel's Jasmine Group and Dat Vang Real Estate Invest-ment Company was signed.As of the late 2016, 11 Israeli firms invested in HCM City with a total registered capital of more than 10 million USD. Two-way trade between the city and Israel neared 1 bil-lion USD.Over the past years, the two sides have partnered effectively in the fields of agricul-ture, information technology, chemicals and cosmetics, among others.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/hcm-city-partners-with-israeli-firms-to-improve-business-climate/109171.vnp

Lam Dong looks to develop local coffee brand


The Central Highlands province of Lam Dong has taken numerous measures to devel-op and protect the brand name of Arabica coffee grown in Cau Dat district, Da Lat City.Arabica coffee from Cau Dat was one of the seven kinds of coffee sold in the world by the US-based Starbucks. It was also the first time Arabica coffee grown in Vietnam had been selected by the group to sell at its more than 21,000 stores across the globe.Cau Dat, located at the altitude of 1,500 metres, has over 3,000 hectares under coffee trees in Xuan Truong and Tram Hanh communes, and part of Xuan Tho commune in Da Lat City. It has favourable natural and geographical conditions for growing Arabi-ca coffee.However, there is now a trend in the area to replace coffee by other crops such as veg-etables and flowers.Luu Van Phat, a farmer in Tram Hanh commune's Phat Chi hamlet, said many villag-ers have shifted to growing vegetables and flowers, which brings more profit than Ar-abica coffee.According to director of the Cau Dat Coffee Cooperative Vo Khanh, the cultivation of Arabica coffee requires high investment and big efforts because the trees are highly vulnerable to diseases and cold weather. One hectare of Arabica coffee brings around 100 million VND (4,400 USD) in revenues, much lower than vegetable and flower crops.The cooperative has just signed a contract to ship seven tonnes of Green Fairtrade cof-fee beans to the Republic of Korea (RoK), Khanh said, adding that it is an optimistic sign for the future of the local Arabica coffee.The cooperative has joined the World Fairtrade coffee network since 2015 with 30 members, producing 130 tonnes of coffee beans per year.The provincial People's Committee has issued a plan to expand the area of Arabica cof-fee trees to 30,000 hectares by 2020, turning the south Central Highlands into one of the world's best Arabica coffee producing regions.According to the Economics Office of Da Lat City, high-yield and high-quality coffee varieties will be selected to replace old coffee trees and effective cultivation models will be transferred to coffee farmers in the locality in order to increase productivity and coffee bean quality.


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http://en.vietnamplus.vn/lam-dong-looks-to-develop-local-coffee-brand/109148.vnp

Clean Vietnamese tea expected to conquer world's markets


Several premium Vietnamese teas were introduced at the Tea Mater Cup 2017, a side event of the Asian biggest international tea and coffee fair held in Singapore recently.The competition aimed at honoring the art of tea drinking while encouraging tea lov-ers to enjoy tea in a new style with clean and safe tea.Doan Hung Son, director of the Research and Development Centre of Vinatea said it is a good chance to introduce some of the most unique and special teas to international friends. Vietnamese tea's flavor is exceptionally loved by tea lovers worldwide.Through international fairs and competitions, Vietnamese tea businesses will have more chances to introduce its tea products as well as seek partners, keeping pace with new market trend and expanding exports.Enterprises all have positive response to the effectiveness of the fair. Through the event, enterprises in the field can directly introduce their products to customers, and seek partners.Besides typical and premium tea products such as black tea and white tea, other unique and natural teas were also presented at the event as ginger tea, herbal tea and honey chamomile tea.According to the Vietnam tea association, the country shipped more than 130,000 tonnes of tea abroad and earned more than 200 million USD in 2016.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/clean-vietnamese-tea-expected-to-conquer-worlds-markets/109134.vnp

Vietnamese lose appetite for 'Made in China' household electrical appliances


Thailand has taken over from China to become Vietnam's top supplier of household electrical appliances.Vietnam imported around $240 million worth of household electrical appliances and parts in the first two months of this year, up 5 percent compared to the same period last year based on Vietnam Customs data.During that period, 'Made in Thailand' household electrical appliances won the hearts of Vietnamese consumers, who seem to be turning their backs on goods made in Chi-na.Thailand alone pocketed over $130 million, accounting for over half of the total. This represents a 3 percent on-year increase, while runner-up China experienced a down-turn of 2.5 percent.Some markets saw impressive on-year growth such as Italy at around 170 percent and Indonesia at 40 percent.http://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/data-speaks/vietnamese-lose-appetite-for-made-in-china-household-electrical-appliances-3559836.html

Exhibition on machinery, technology to take place in Hanoi


World's leading brands of measuring devices and automation technology will bring their latest products to the Vietnam Manufacturing Expo 2017 (VME 2017) which will take place in Hanoi from April 26-28.The event, the country's leading exhibition on machinery and technology for manufac-turing industry, held by Reed Tradex Co., Ltd, is expected to see over 200 brands from 20 countries, together with five international booths of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan (China), heard a press conference in Hanoi on March 23.They will join other two exhibitions held within the event: "Vietnam Sheet Metal" and "Industrial Components & Subcontracting Vietnam".The VME Forum "Highway to Industry 4.0: Smart Factory for Vietnam Manufacturing in Increasing Productivity" will unravel the mystery of Industry 4.0 (the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies) and how manufac-turers in Vietnam can make it work for them.


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According to Isara Burintramart, Managing director of Reed Tradex Co., Ltd, Vietnam has shifted to produce higher value products instead of traditional ones. He witnessed significant changes in Vietnam's industry in the past decade, which still has signs of development especially when the world is entering the Industry 4.0 era."I believe that Vietnam's workforce is ready to learn and step into the Industry 4.0 era. The best way to approach the 4.0 revolution is to do in small steps, starting with a strat-egy or a pilot project", he said.Nguyen Van Thu, Chair of the Vietnam Association of Mechanical Industry, agreed, adding that the small and simple steps need to be taken immediately.Investing in human resources should be considered the most important task for local manufacturers in addition to fostering technical innovation and enhancing coopera-tion among businesses to maximise efficiency and avoid overlapping investments, he said.In the VME framework, Reed Tradex will join hands with the Vietnam Association of Mechanical Industry (VAMI) to organise a conference on new application and technol-ogy in manufacturing mechanical products. The conference is expected to gather 100 mechanical companies.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/exhibition-on-machinery-technology-to-take-place-in-ha-noi/109177.vnp

Thai products week 2017 kicks off in Hai Phong


The Thailand's product week 2017 kicked off in the northern port city of Hai Phong on March 23.The four-day event is part of activities to promote trade and investment among the countries in the Mekong sub-region, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, as well as Asean member nations. It also aims to enhance mutual understanding on cul-ture between Vietnamese and Thai people.Various types of products like food and beverages, household appliances, jewellery, healthcare products, cosmetics and decorations are on display at more than 70 booths of over 54 Vietnamese companies, who are official importers of Thai products.The event offers opportunities for Hai Phong's firms to raise their competitiveness and expand business.Several activities were also held at the event, including cooking and dancing perform-ances.http://en.vietnamplus.vn/thai-products-week-2017-kicks-off-in-hai-phong/109167.vnp

Casinos still off-limits to Vietnamese


Vietnamese residents should have been admitted to local casinos from last Wednesday when a three-year pilot scheme took effect. However, casino operators have denied Vi-etnamese entry due to a lack of guidance, Lao Dong newspaper reports.Seven businesses have been licensed to operate casinos in Vietnam.Pham Ngoc Nam, deputy general director of Royal International Corp - the owner of a five-star hotel complex with a casino in Halong City, told the paper that the firm has been waiting for a guiding circular on the implementation of government Decree 03/2017/ND-CP which allows Vietnamese passport holders to enter casinos.He said the decree allows Vietnamese people in casinos for a three-year period, but the government has yet to issue official guidelines. The requirements for casino entry, es-pecially income, are unclear.He said other casinos in Quang Ninh Province and other localities are in wait-and-see mode as well.That gamblers must prove their monthly income of at least VND10 million (around $439) seems to be a tough challenge, said a representative of another casino."Many casino goers are self-employed and wealthy but unwilling to apply for income certificates," he explained.A representative of the Ministry of Finance said the Department of Banking and Finan-


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cial Institutions is finalising draft guidelines for the implementation of the decree on casino business. However, he refused to say when it comes out.The representative said the delay in issuing the guidance circular is unavoidable, as this is the first time Vietnamese gamblers have got the green light for entering casinos in the country. Many issues should be taken into careful consideration.Economist Nguyen Minh Phong shared the same view, saying that technically, the guidance circular should be available upon the promulgation of the decree. However, there is no precedent for this, thereby requiring careful preparation.The decree specifies Vietnamese citizens admitted to casinos must be at least 21 years old with regular monthly income of at least VND10 million or being subject to the third range of taxable income which is VND10-18 million a month under the Law on Person-al Income Tax. The Ministry of Finance is responsible for providing them with appli-cation forms for these conditions.Gamblers will not be allowed in if their family members like parents, parents-in-law, spouses and children submit formal requests for preventing them from casinos.Besides, those who have violated national security rules or committed other crimes abroad resulting in more than three years of imprisonment will not be allowed in ca-sinos. This includes those serving jail terms, with or without bail, or any other form of legal punishment.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53068/Casinos-still-off-limits-to-Vietnamese.html

HCM City moves on with Saigon Safari project


The government of HCM City will press on with the long-planned Saigon Safari project in Cu Chi District and develop it into a new tourist attraction.According to a decision made by the HCM City People's Committee on Monday, Sai-gon Safari would be one of the ecotourism destinations for domestic and international visitors.Saigon Safari will have about 500 staff able to serve 1,800 visitors who stay overnight and 3,000 others who participate in day tours to the safari.The west of the site will house a safari and an entertainment area. The safari will in-clude an open zoo, technical, breeding, animal care and operation facilities, temporary shelters, squares, and parking lots.The north of the park will be home to low-rise bungalows and hotel rooms, restau-rants, children's playgrounds, green parks and recreational zones.In 2015, Vinpearl Joint Stock Company proposed developing Saigon Safari on over 460 hectares at a total cost of $500 million.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53071/HCM City-moves-on-with-Saigon-Safari-project.html

Danang wants master plan for Son Tra tourism site reviewed


The Danang Tourism Association has written to the prime minister and relevant gov-ernment agencies proposing reviewing the master plan for developing Son Tra Penin-sula in Danang City into a national tourism site by 2025 with a vision towards 2030.The association said no more hotel and resort projects should be licensed on the penin-sula as the city already abounds with hotels and resorts in Danang. Data shows the city has nearly 600 hotels with some 20,000 guest rooms, which are enough to serve 15 mil-lion visitors a year.Tourist arrivals in the city last year accounted for over one-third of that number.Son Tra Peninsula should be developed into a sightseeing and entertainment destina-tion to protect nature, the association said, adding motor vehicles should be restricted on the peninsula to reduce noise and pollution.Seaside resort projects near the Son Tra Mountain should be limited as they may de-stroy coral reefs, alter water currents, devastate the shoreline and affect the local com-munity.The association's chair Huynh Tan Vinh told the Daily that the unlicensed construction of several dozen villas for tourism purposes on Son Tra Peninsula had sparked public


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concern.The felling of trees to make room for these villas is not the main reason for the associ-ation's decision to propose a review but the master plan has some contents which may do harm to the ecosystem of the peninsula.In the master plan, up to 1,600 guest rooms would be built on the peninsula, which will impact Son Tra's diverse ecosystem, Vinh said.He noted the proposal came as investors had been speeding up work on their projects on the peninsula since the city government's announcement of the master plan in mid-February.The city cannot do anything with the already-approved projects but new construction projects on the peninsula should be restricted, he said.The association also stressed the strategic defense location of Son Tra Peninsula. Un-planned hotel and resort projects could undermine security and defense if they are transferred to foreign investors under the Enterprise Law, it said.The area planned for tourism development on Son Tra Peninsula will cover over 1,000 hectares and house luxury resorts and villa complexes, with the number of guest rooms estimated at 1,600 by 2030.The area is expected to attract 3.5 million visitors by 2025 and over 4.6 million by 2030.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53069/Danang-wants-master-plan-for-Son-Tra-tour-ism-site-reviewed.html

PetroVietnam projects falling Q2 oil output as low prices weigh on revenue


Crude oil output from April-June is expected to fall 10 percent from the first quarter.State oil and gas group PetroVietnam, the country's largest enterprise, has projected lower revenue for the three months ending June in comparison with the first quarter, citing plans to pump less crude oil and no major improvements in global oil prices.The Hanoi-based group projected revenue in the April-June period at VND102.5 tril-lion ($4.5 billion), down 14 percent from its estimate for the first quarter, while it en-visages crude oil to stay at $50 per barrel in the second quarter, VietnamPlus cited a PetroVietnam report as saying.The group did not immediately comment when contacted by VnExpress International.PetroVietnam will pump 6.05 million tonnes of oil equivalent in the April-June period, including 3.55 million tonnes of crude oil, or 286,000 barrels per day, and 2.5 billion cu-bic meters of natural gas, the VietnamPlus report said.In the first quarter ending March, the group estimated crude oil output at 3.93 million tonnes and natural gas at 2.52 billion cubic meters.First-quarter gross profit is estimated at VND5.1 trillion, 18 percent above the group's quarterly target and making up 30 percent of the annual target for 2017, the report said.The group's earnings in the first quarter have received support from global oil prices.Vietnam's crude oil exports between January 1 and March 15 brought in $527 million, a jump of 51 percent from the same period last year, even though shipment volume eased 8 percent in the same period to 1.23 million tonnes, Vietnam Customs data showed.Global benchmark Brent crude stood at $51.03 a barrel Thursday, after briefly dipping below $50 a barrel the previous session for the first time since November.The latest oil prices are slightly above PetroVietnam's projections, but they have dropped more than 10 percent since the end of 2016.Last year, Brent jumped 52 percent to $56.82 per barrel, while US benchmark West Tex-as Intermediate crude rose around 45 percent to $53.72 per barrel, the largest annual gains since 2009.Global oil prices have slumped since the summer of 2014 from above $100 a barrel due to a huge inventory in the United States.Oil traders said that prices remained under pressure, largely due to a bloated US mar-ket and doubts that an effort led by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Coun-tries (OPEC) to cut output were having the desired effect of reining in a global fuel supply overhang, Reuters reported.


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PetroVietnam has plans to produce 14.2 million tonnes of crude oil this year, down nearly 18 percent from 2016, while its natural gas output could drop 9 percent to 9.61 billion cubic meters.Vietsovpetro, a Vietnam-Russia oil and gas venture in which PetroVietnam owns a 51 percent stake, has envisaged its oil output this year nearly flat at 5 million tonnes, after hitting 5.04 million tonnes in 2016.PetroVietnam was Vietnam's biggest enterprise in 2016, based on revenue, assets and profit, among other criteria, according to Vietnam Report, a Vietnamese business rat-ing firm.Last year, the group pumped 17.23 million tonnes of crude oil, including around 2 mil-lion tonnes from overseas projects.http://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/petrovietnam-projects-falling-q2-oil-output-as-low-prices-weigh-on-revenue-3559598.html

E-commerce in Vietnam is still attractive for even more players: Tiki's CEO

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | DEAL STREET ASIA

E-commerce in Vietnam is a hard game to play, attributable to the underdeveloped ful-fillment system and modern payment methods. However, market watchers feel that the industry is offers ample opportunities to players, who have the right business model and the distribution reach.Apart from foreign online retailers as well as major VC-and-corporate-backed startups like FPT Corporation's Sendo, Vingroup's Adayroi and Tiki, the space has witnessed intense competition between several players including the likes of Caganu, Shopee and most recently Vuivui, that was launched by mobile device retailer Mobile World."The e-commerce segment has taken up only 1 per cent of the $100 billion retail market, but it is poised for tremendous growth. It is expected that e-commerce will occupy 7-10 per cent of a $200 billion retail industry within the next 10 years," Tran Ngoc Thai Son, CEO of Tiki, told DEALSTREETASIA in an interview. Tiki is one of the few e-commerce platforms in Vietnam that have survived and continues to attract funding. It had raised its first round of funding in 2012 from Cyberagent Ventures before secur-ing a series B investment from Sumitomo Corporation. Last year, Southeast Asia's first tech unicorn VNG Corporation had injected $17 million in Tik, picking up a 38 per cent equity in it, which valued the company at $45 million. Edited Excerpts.What made you interested in venturing into e-commerce? After Master of E-commerce studying in Australia, I came back to Vietnam in 2007, and my experience with e-com-merce in the country was not good. I thought Vietnamese online customers deserved a better e-commerce platform, which meant higher product quality, better services and delivery. When I founded Tiki back in March 2010, which started out selling books, a bit like Amazon, I recognised that in Vietnam, traditional selling channel was domi-nant while the cultivation took time. However, the good signal for me was the rapid growth of the Internet and mobile usage which rapidly facilitated e-commerce to be-come a favourite channel. That made me very bullish about venturing into e-com-merce.While a lot of e-commerce companies in Vietnam had to shut down, including VC-backed startups, what about Tiki make the operation last and grow over the past 7 years? We started small, but has grown organically and built our own fulfillments and logistics system. Thanks to the ability to control in-house operations, we have earned customer trust, as they come back over and over again. We also continuously expand our offerings so customers have a reason to come back. It's a virtuous circle between Tiki and our customers. In 2016, Tiki, as an online mass retailer, marked a rapid devel-opment with 300,000 products of over 2,500 genuine brands from electronics, cosmetic, FMCG, books and others.Still, what are the challenges for Tiki?That is finding talents. E-commerce is still relatively new, so hunting for talents, who really know the market well, but at the same time have the humbleness to learn and change fast with the right ambition, is increasingly difficult.Besides, the challenges for e-commerce in general is the lack of important components


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of the ecosystem, which are delivery, payment, technology, warehouse, and human re-source. That is the big hurdle that only companies who manage to integratedly do well in all of these segments can grow and compete.How important is external funding to an e-commerce business in a nascent market like Vietnam? Rather than financial investment, what do you think is needed in ensuring investors commit to grow the company along with you?Investment in e-commerce is very important, as the more capital is injected to educate the market, the faster and bigger the market grows. In 2013, Tiki secured a seven-digit series B round of funding from Sumitomo Corporation. The reason we chose to work with Sumitomo was because of their long-standing experience in e-commerce. We see ourselves, in five years, still building e-commerce together. The funding had been used to improve customer care by buying more warehouses and getting faster delivery. In 2016, Vietnamese technology giant VNG Corporation purchased 38 per cent of Tiki.Japanese investors are often very tough. What do they like about Tiki?Actually, it's very similar to what customers feel about us. We earn the investor's trust because we are implementing our commitment to the customers every single day. In our general internal report for 2016, 89 per cent of the customers were satisfied with Tiki, while card payments accounted for a relative high rate of 34 per cent. It has prov-en that Tiki has become a credible online shopping destination.How do you expect Tiki to be after future fundraising?Tiki's vision is to become the most-trusted e-commerce platform in Vietnam. Accord-ing to various researches, as customers' demand for quality services is increasing, de-livery time has become a key factor. So in 2017, Tiki aims to increase the same day shipping capacity from 25 per cent to 50 per cent.There are a lot of public reports about how money is burnt for e-commerce business, including Tiki. But investors are still looking at the company as well as the industry as a whole. What's your assessment for the e-commerce sector in Vietnam?The e-commerce segment has taken up only 1 per cent of the $100 billion retail market, but it is poised for tremendous growth. It is expected that e-commerce will occupy 7-10 per cent of a $200 billion retail industry within the next 10 years. The upside is just so attractive, and big enough for even more players.The market has a new player, as The gioi di dong has launched Vuivui.com, saying it follows a model similar to Tiki. What's your take on the competition in general? How does it position Tiki?Over the past seven years, Tiki has grown by 130-190 per cent compared to the average industry growth of 20-33 per cent per year. I belive we are going in the right track. Be-sides that, I also saw a lot of new players enter the e-commerce space, most of which had bigger budget or funding than Tiki. But many of them are now gone. However, I think competition is generally good for a fast growing market like e-commerce, which requires hundreds of millions dollar to build and educate.http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/e-commerce-in-vietnam-is-still-attractive-for-even-more-players-tikis-ceo-68290/

Mapletree Business Centre opened


Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd, a Singapore-headquartered real estate development, investment and capital management company, on March 22 announced the official opening of Mapletree Business Centre in District 7, HCM City.Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, Vietnam's deputy prime minister Trinh Dinh Dung and Mapletree Chair Edmund Cheng unveiled the plaque of Mapletree's first office development in Vietnam. The 17-storey office development marks the sec-ond phase of precinct transformation at the Saigon South Place Complex covering 4.4 hectares in District 7.Mapletree said the Grade A office tower covering 28,384 square meters of gross floor area has attracted strong leasing interest from global and local corporations, and is home to multiple companies, including Standard Chartered Bank, Uniben, Far Eastern Polytex and SCC UK.


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The Saigon South Place Complex is a mixed-use project developed by Mapletree in phases. The first phase was a joint venture with Saigon Co.op-SC VivoCity, a 64,250-square-metre shopping mall which was inaugurated in April 2015. An Oakwood-branded serviced apartment and a high-rise residential block RichLane Residences are on track for completion by the end of 2017.There are also plans for two more office towers in the precinct, according to Mapletree.Commenting on the project, Mapletree Chair Edmund Cheng said the company wants to create a work-live-play environment by combining lifestyle, office and residential at Saigon South Place Complex.Hiew Yoon Khong, group chief executive officer of Mapletree, said in a statement that Mapletree entered Vietnam more than 12 years ago and has since grown from one lo-gistics project into one of the largest Singapore real estate companies in Vietnam by capital investment."On March 23, Mapletree owns and manages more than S$1.2 billion worth of mixed-use, office, retail, industrial, logistics, residential and serviced apartment assets in Ha-noi, HCM City, Binh Duong and Bac Ninh. Vietnam presents an exciting investment opportunity for us because of its strong economic fundamentals, such as a young and industrious population, a burgeoning middle income group as well as a stable increase in foreign direct investments," Hiew said.He added Mapletree is looking for more investment opportunities in Vietnam because the country is seen as a key market for the group.Mapletree Business Centre is developed and managed by Mapletree Vietnam Manage-ment Consultancy Co Ltd The office tower is designed to meet the office space require-ments of global corporations from various industries, including information technology (IT), research and development (R&D), banking and financial services sec-tors.After the opening ceremony of Mapletree Business Centre, the Singaporean PM toured Co.opXtra, a hypermarket jointly set up by Saigon Co.op and Singapore's NTUC Fair-Price at SC VivoCity.Mapletree's strategic focus is to invest in markets and real estate sectors with good growth potential. It currently manages four Singapore-listed real estate investment trusts (REITs) and six private equity real estate funds, which hold a diverse portfolio of assets in Asia Pacific, the United Kingdom and the United States.By December 31 last year, Mapletree had owned and managed S$38.6 billion (around $26.6 billion) of office, retail, logistics, industrial, residential, corporate housing and serviced apartment, as well as student housing properties. The group's assets are lo-cated in Singapore, Australia, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, the UK, the US and Vietnam.In Vietnam, Mapletree is developing the mixed-use Saigon South Place Complex in phases. The group also owns and manages three logistics parks in Binh Duong and Bac Ninh, industrial and business park development Mapletree Business City @ Binh Duong, mixed-use development Pacific Place in Hanoi, and CentrePoint office build-ing with a retail podium in HCM City.In June last year, the group acquired mPlaza Saigon, formerly known as Kumho Asi-ana Plaza, which is a prime mixed-use development comprising Grade A office, serv-iced apartment, a hotel and a retail podium in District 1, HCM City.http://english.thesaigontimes.vn/53065/Mapletree-Business-Centre-opened.html

Isuzu Vietnam starts construction of after-sale service centre in HCM City


Japanese automaker Isuzu has picked Tan Phu Trung industrial zone (IZ) in Cu Chi district of HCM City as the location for its after-sale service centre.Subsidiary Isuzu Vietnam is a joint venture operating in assembling and distributing vehicles with the brand Isuzu, the world leading brand for commercial vehicles and diesel engines. The 1-hectare centre received its investment certificate on December 9, 2016. Construction started on March 22 at Lot B6-6 D2 road in the IZ. The centre will be completed and start operation in September this year.


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The centre will provide repair and warranty services. It is aimed to diversify Isuzu Vi-etnam's business, improve the quality of its products and services and increase the competitiveness of the company to meet the demand of customers.The company chose Tan Phu Trung IZ due to its convenient location and smart plan-ning. The cooperation between the two will contribute to enhancing the image of Cu Chi district.At the moment Tan Phu Trung IZ has attracted 70 investors. Many plants have started production. Its convenient location and smart planning as well as investment incen-tives have made the IZ very appealing to both domestic and foreign investors. The IZ commits to supporting the investors and facilitating their operation in order to bring them long-term stability and a base for future development.http://www.vir.com.vn/isuzu-vietnam-starts-construction-of-after-sale-service-cen-tre-in-ho-chi-minh-city.html

Dacin opens sales for Vision 1 project


Dacin, the third largest construction company in Taiwan, has officially opened sales for the third block in the first phase of its Tam Nhin (Vision) residential project, after a successful launch for the first two blocks.The project, located in Tran Dai Nghia Street of Binh Tan District, began in February last year on an area of nearly 60,000 sq.m and will consist of 10 apartment towers with a total of 1,980 units and 32 semi-detached houses.The first phase (Vision 1) consists of four blocks which offer a total of 620 units. These blocks are now being finished to be handed over to buyers by the end of this year.Ku Cheng Fu, legal representative of Dacin, said that with Vision, the Taiwanese de-veloper hoped to ease the shortage of accommodation for people in the city.Aimed at the mid-range residential apartment segment, Vision has enough facilities to offer a modern and friendly living environment for residents, Fu said.Established in 1967, Dacin was publicly listed in Taiwan and is ranked as the third largest construction company in Taiwan by the International Standards Organisation. It has many projects in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.http://bizhub.vn/property/dacin-opens-sales-for-vision-1-project_284998.html

Bao Viet Insurance the best workplace in non-life insurance


Insurer tops the list of best places to work in non-life insurance in The 100 Vietnam Best Places to Work 2016 list from Anphabe and Nielsen.Bao Viet Insurance has been named the Best Place to Work in Vietnam's non-life insur-ance sector for the second consecutive year.The 100 Vietnam Best Places to Work 2016 list was compiled via independent research by Anphabe, the biggest career network of management professionals in Vietnam, and Nielsen, a global market research firm, and was based on feedback from 26,128 partic-ipants from three generations in 24 industries.This is the second consecutive year Bao Viet Insurance participated in the voting, with 2017's result seeing the company among the Top 3 workplaces within the insurance sector and the top in non-life insurance. Rankings were based on salary levels, bonus-es, welfare, and work-life balance.The result demonstrates Bao Viet Insurance's ceaseless efforts over its 50 years in in-vesting in human resources, the company's most precious asset. Starting from an un-derstanding of employee needs, the company has created a new standard for an ideal workplace.All of Bao Viet Insurance's employees are entitled to comprehensive care and worthy rewards for their contributions, via diversified experiences and challenges at work, and also receive opportunities to learn and develop themselves.Speaking about the award, deputy CEO Nguyen Quang Hung said it is proof of the company's commitment and effort in developing human resources over the last 50 years, together with its mission of ensuring prosperity and long-term benefits for cus-tomers, investors, and the Vietnamese community.


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"I want to thank all of the employees, consultants, and agents of Bao Viet Insurance, both past and present, for their contributions to the company, helping to build Bao Viet Insurance into a constructive and leading company in the non-life insurance sector that is closely engaged with the community," Hung added.While many companies saw declining growth last year, Bao Viet Insurance secured an ideal 12 per cent growth rate against 2015. Revenue from initial insurance premiums surpassed VND6.8 trillion ($298.3 million), or nearly 20 per cent of the revenue in Vi-etnam's insurance market. It's not only the leading insurer for household customers, it is also the leading insurer for packaged insurance solutions, minimising damage to in-stitutional customers and companies.Earlier this month, Bao Viet Insurance officially opened two new branches in Hanoi - Bao Viet Thang Long and Bao Viet Trang An - increasing its total throughout the coun-try to 75. The openings are within the network expansion plans of the insurer. Inherit-ing the experience of existing branches, Bao Viet Thang Long and Bao Viet Trang An will be highly competitive and will develop quickly. Expected revenue in each branch this year is around VND100 billion ($4.4 million), with 60 per cent coming from retail.Life insurance players in Vietnam made an impressive showing in 2016, with growth reaching 37 per cent, the highest in a decade. Figures from the Insurance Supervisory Authority reveal that premiums totalled around VND86 trillion ($3.8 billion) last year, representing a rise of 22.74 per cent over 2015. In particular, total revenue for non-life insurance was VND36.4 trillion ($1.6 billion), up nearly 14.7 per cent, while revenue from life insurance was over VND49.2 trillion ($2.2 billion), up 28.4 per cent. Vietnam's insurance industry remains dominated by Bao Viet and Prudential. Prudential leads the market in terms of total insurance premiums while Bao Viet has the strongest book of new business.http://vneconomictimes.com/article/business/bao-viet-insurance-the-best-workplace-in-non-life-insurance

Sun Group introduces new apartment block


Property developer Sun Group has official introduced T2 block of Sun Grand City An-cora Residence, which has impressive design and overlooks the Red River and green space.If T1 and T3 buildings are built in the shape of the letter L, T2 is designed in the shape of the letter O which enables the sunlight to reach all rooms of the building.T2 has only 10 apartments per floor, the lowest density in Sun Grand City Ancora Res-idence project, but 14 lifts to ensure convenience for residents.With areas ranging from 98.4 square metres to 134.2 square metres, and built 3 metres high, T2 apartments will be a well-aired living space for residents, which also uses low-energy tempered glass to filter light and prevent harm from ultraviolet infrared rays. Low-energy tempered glass is a modern environmentally friendly solution which is used popularly in many big cities in the world.Ancora Residence is also the first housing project in Hanoi to use the international-standard water treatment technology.According to a representative from Sun Group, the application of green technologies at Ancora Residence would help reduce energy consumption and releases of wastes, which could contribute to improving living quality for its residents.Ancora Residence also has modern amenities, such as all-season swimming pools, a modern gymnasium, trade centres and schools as well as round-the-clock security.The developer is also offering attractive sales policies, including zero interest rate and grace period of 18 months and zero services charges in two years.On March 26, the model apartment of Sun Grand City Ancora Residence will be offi-cially introduced in Hanoi.http://bizhub.vn/property/sun-group-introduces-new-apartment-block_284989.html

Rosewood to manage Vietnam resort

24/MAR/2017 INTELLASIA | TRAVEL WEEKLY

Rosewood Hotels & Resorts will debut operations in Vietnam when it opens a beach-


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front property on the country's central coast in 2019.The Rosewood Hoi An will be near the town of Hoi An, a Unesco World Heritage Site with more than 800 historic buildings. Located about 20 miles south of Da Nang, the resort will have 70 rooms and 30 residences, including five with dedicated spa-treat-ment rooms.The property will be located adjacent to a golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones II.http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Rosewood-to-manage-Viet-nam-resort End
