Day: June 17, 2021

Health safety for athletes, members of delegations and audience is the top priority of the sport sector of Vietnam during the 31st Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games 31) and the 11th ASEAN Para Games (ASEAN Para Games 11), amid complicated COVID-19 developments, Tran Duc Phan, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam Sports Administration has said.

As the host of the regional events, the sport sector has been discussing and adjusting plans in order to propose optimal plans to the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, and the Government for consideration, Phan told the Vietnam News Agency’s reporters in a recent interview.

The sector has closely coordinated with relevant ministries, agencies and localities to make careful preparations for the events, slated in Vietnam later this year.

He noted that before April 27 when the fourth COVID-19 wave hit Vietnam, the sector had worked with localities to prepare for the regional events as scheduled, but after the detection of a number of COVID-19 cases in some localities that were chosen to host some sports, the administration had halted the preparation work.

Regarding difficulties facing the sector in the current situation, Phan said all countries in the region are suffering the COVID-19 pandemic. So the travelling among countries becomes complicated due to entry-exit regulations and pandemic prevention and control measures.

Besides, venues for SEA Games 31 are arranged in 12 cities and provinces, and there are no athletes’ villages in Vietnam to host members of delegations from participating countries. So that, they will stay in 40 different hotels and have to move to competition locations, making the pandemic prevention and control more difficult, he stressed.

According to initial calculations, in the context of no outbreak, the two events will welcome about 25,000 athletes, coaches, officials, referees, reporters, fans and tourists, said Phan, adding that ensuring safety for such a large number of people at the same time is a great challenge for the organising board.

Phan said postponing the events to 2022 must be calculated appropriately, adding the events should be held in the first half of 2022, so that Cambodia can prepare to hold the 32rd SEA Games in 2023./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

On top of their historic achievement of advancing to the third round of World Cup qualification for the first time, the national football team have also qualified for the finals of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup.

The continent’s top tournament will be held in China in 2023.

All 12 teams that advanced to the third round and reigning champions Qatar qualified for the tournament set to take place from June 16 to July 16, 2023.

Eleven other participants will be chosen from qualifiers which will be held later this year.

At the 2019 edition, Vietnam advanced to the quarter-finals where they lost 1-0 to Japan in the UAE./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

A webinar on boosting business-to-business (B2B) transactions between Vietnam and Venezuela took place on June 16 in a bid to deepen the bilateral ties toward effectiveness.

The Embassy of Vietnam in Venezuela together with the Venezuela-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce (CAVENVIET) co-organised the event.

In his opening speech, Vietnamese Ambassador Le Viet Duyen thanked Vietnam’s Thai Binh Investment Trading Corporation and Hanoi Trade Corporation (Hapro) for their collaboration with the embassy in offering information about Vietnamese exports as well as supporting and attending its virtual workshops.

A Vietnamese – Venezuela trade is changing positively, increasing exchanges of information and trade opportunities between their businesses are important to fostering the nation’s comprehensive partnership.

Representatives from the two companies said through CAVENVIET, they want to connect with Venezuelan partners; fuel the export of farm produce, home products, consumer goods, and electronic devices; and help Venezuelan firms enter the Vietnamese market of nearly 100 million people.

CAVENVIET President Oswaldo Hernandez pledged his commitment to translating the Vietnamese side’s proposals into reality in contribution to diversifying trade and promoting economic relations between the countries./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The English version of the Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies (JABES-E) has been included in the list of Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

This is the first economic journal of Vietnam to enter the list, according to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Trong Hoai, Editor-in-Chief of JABES at the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City.

The ESCI was launched in late 2015 by Thomson Reuters as a new database in Web of Science.

This index was produced by Clarivate Analytics since 2017, which includes over 7740 journals from various areas of research.

Journals included in the ESCI cover all disciplines and range from international and broad scope publications to those that provide deeper regional or specialty area coverage.

Web of Science Core Collection content is uniquely selective and indexing is uniquely consistent. Every article and all cited references from every journal have been indexed, creating the most comprehensive and complete citation network to power both confident discovery and trusted assessment.

Seven publications of JABES-E have been published by Emerald Publishing so far, with 58 research studies by 132 authors from 25 countries worldwide. /.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

A contract on a bidding package worth 30 trillion VND (nearly 1.29 billion USD) on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the Quang Trach 1 thermal power plant in the central province of Quang Binh was signed in Hanoi on June 17.

The signatories are the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), and a consortium of contractors comprising Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp, Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company (HEC) of the Republic of Korea (RoK), and Construction Corporation No.1 of Vietnam.

The construction of the project, which has a total investment of over 41.1 trillion VND (nearly 1.79 billion USD), is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year, and complete in 2025. It will cover an area of 48.6 ha in Quang Trach district’s Quang Dong commune.

The plant, which has two turbines with a combined design capacity of 1,200 MW, is expected to supply about 8.4 billion kWh of electricity to the national grid per year, contributing to ensuring national energy security.

The plant will use the ultra-supercritical coal combustion technology (USC), and be equipped with synchronous treatment systems of wastewater and exhaust gas, and dust filtration systems, in line with Vietnam’s environment standards./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The PetroVietnam Gas Trading Company (PV GAS Trading) received a batch of 46,000 tonnes of refrigerated liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Saudi Aramco in early June, making it the first direct customer of the Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company in Vietnam.

The batch worth some 560 billion VND (24.06 million USD) resulted from a decade of exchanging, seeking opportunities, and building trust for cooperation between the sides.

Most of the imported LPG will be used for domestic consumption, with a fraction of its earmarked for export.

Established for nearly 15 years, PV Gas Trading now supplies close to and more than 70 percent of the Vietnamese and Cambodian markets’ demand for LPG, respectively.

In 2020, its international sales of LPG exceeded 300,000 tonnes.

Based in Dhahran, Saudi Aramco owns the second largest crude oil reserve in the world and is also the largest LPG producer and supplier in the Middle East with about 27 million tonnes of output. Its export volume is estimated at 8 million tonnes, mostly to the Asian market./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Industrial and trading activities of Vietnam have sustained their growth trend although the COVID-19 resurgence has hit some provinces and cities with large industrial parks, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai said on June 17.

Speaking at the ministry’s regular press meeting for the second quarter, he added exports have maintained high year-on-year growth, which is relatively sustainable thanks to the even growth in shipments of all the important commodities such as electronics, textile-garment, footwear, machinery, and farm produce, and to major markets like the US, China, the EU, the Republic of Korea, Japan, and ASEAN.

Regarding problems in industrial and trading activities, Hai said COVID-19 outbreaks in large industrial parks have had certain impacts on industrial production growth as well as supply chains.

Besides, the import of production materials accounts for a “very big” proportion, about 90 percent, thus pushing up the import value and affecting the trade balance.

Lockdowns or social distancing measures driven by coronavirus outbreaks in some localities have also eroded consumption demand, especially for non-essential goods, which has influenced retail sales, according to the official.

So far, he said, industries and trade have basically developed as planned, with total retail sales achieving about 38 percent of this year’s target and exports over 44 percent.

The increase in index of industrial production is currently higher than expected, rising by 9.9 percent in the first five months compared to the targeted 8 percent. The figure is forecast to maintain at some 9 percent in the first half of 2021, compared to the 8-percent target for the whole year.

Exports are set to increase by about 21.7 percent while total retail sales and service revenue 7.1 percent during January – June, compared to the year’s respective targets of 4 – 5 percent and 8 percent.

The industry and trade sector will keep making efforts to achieve its growth targets as well as those of the country, the Deputy Minister said.

Particularly, the ministry will continue working to promote overseas shipments, diversify both export and import markets, optimise opportunities generated by free trade agreements, and remove barriers to enter new markets./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency