Day: November 24, 2021

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has proposed rescheduling excise tax payments for local automobile manufactures and assemblers.

The draft decree recommends that payments over 4.4 trillion VND (191 million USD) for October and November be delayed until late December.

Under the draft decree the payment deadline of the October excise tax, or special consumption tax, for domestically manufactured or assembled cars will be extended to December 20, while the November deadline will be extended to December 30, according to the MoF.

The draft decree was set up following the results of Decree No 109, which allowed local auto firms to enjoy excise tax payment extensions in 2020 to provide support for enterprises impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

To be entitled to the extension, local automotive firms will have to submit online or written applications for extensions to tax agencies when making excise tax declarations, in line with current regulations.

If the application is not submitted while making tax declarations, the firms will have to submit the applications before December 15.

If automotive firms, who were not subject to the incentive during the extension period, are found to have obtained an extension, they will have to fully pay their excise taxes and delayed amounts.

After the extension period, if tax agencies discover firms who are not subject to the incentive but still hold an extension, they will have to pay fines on top of fully paying their excise taxes and delayed amounts.

Most of the relevant ministries and agencies agree with the MoF’s draft decree.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has agreed that it is essential to support businesses in overcoming the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic. By doing so, local automobile manufacturers and assemblers, as well as automobile joint-venture car makers and assemblers in Việt Nam, will benefit from the decree. This will allow them to gather more capital to maintain and expand their production.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has also come to a consensus on the extension policy to support businesses, as proposed by the Ministry of Finance. VCCI recognises that local automobile assemblers and manufacturers have played an important role in the country’s economic development. The manufacturers and assemblers have made great contributions to the State budget through the collection of all kinds of taxes and fees, as well as creating jobs for hundreds of thousands of people.

Successfully maintaining a domestic automobile industry will also be an opportunity to transfer advanced technologies to the local auto industry.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The Central Power Corporation (EVNCPC) said on November 24 that it ranks fifth in ASEAN in the Smart Grid Index (SGI) with 64.3/100 points.

The ranking was conducted by SP Group, a leading utilities group in the Asia Pacific, and provides a suite of sustainable energy solutions for customers in Singapore and the region.

Since 2012, the corporation has begun to work on a project on the roadmap developing a smart power grid, which was officially approved in 2013.

By the end of October 2021, EVNCPC had installed 4.2 million electronic meters, of which 4 million are telemeters using the RF Spider system, helping to raise the success of electrical data collection to 99.2 percent.

The SGI is a simple and quantifiable framework that measures smartness of power grids globally, in seven key dimensions. The framework assesses proxies of each dimension using publicly available information. The index guides utilities to build smarter grids and deliver better value to customers. From the benchmarking results, best practices can be identified, and shared among peer utilities to drive smart grid advancement.

The 2021 SGI benchmarks a total of 86 utilities across 37 countries/markets.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The upcoming Switzerland visit by President Nguyen Xuan Phuc is expected to create a strong political motivation and open up bigger opportunities for the cooperation between Vietnam and the European country which are commensurate with their potential and strengths, stated Vietnamese Ambassador to Switzerland Le Linh Lan.

In an interview granted to Vietnam News Agency on the occasion of the President’s visit, the ambassador said during the visit, which will take place from November 25-29 at the invitation of Swiss President Guy Parmelin, President Phuc will hold talks with his Swiss counterpart and have a meeting with President of the Swiss National Council Andreas Aebi.

He will have working sessions with leaders of the United Nations Office in Geneva, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), meet the Vietnamese community in Switzerland and attend a Vietnam-Switzerland business forum, Lan said, adding that the President will also work with leading pharmaceutical firms of Switzerland to strengthen cooperation in COVID-19 vaccine and treatment medicine supply. She held that the visit manifests Vietnam’s great attention to the development of the traditional friendship and partnership with Switzerland, one of the first western European countries that set up diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1971. Switzerland is also one of the European countries that consider Vietnam a prioritised development partner. The country has provided 600 million USD in development aid to Vietnam in the 1991-2021 period.

The visit also shows Vietnam’s strong commitment to further accelerating and deepening ties with Switzerland, she stressed, adding that it also reflects Vietnam’s multilateral foreign policy.

The ambassador expressed her optimism about the prospects of the partnership between the two countries.

She said that 2021 is a special year which not only marks the 50-year ties between the two countries, but also creates a chance for both sides to seek ways to speed up negotiations towards the signing of a free trade agreement between Vietnam and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), open up new cooperation opportunities and realise the great potential in bilateral collaboration, especially in trade, investment, sustainable development, renovation and digital transformation.

Similarities and shared values of both countries, along with the supplementary characteristics of the two economies and the great cooperation potential will be positive factors for the bilateral cooperative partnership, said Lan.

She also highlighted the contributions by overseas Vietnamese entrepreneurs, experts and intellectuals in Switzerland to the connections between the two countries, especially in health care, policy consultation and investment attraction in high technology, digital transformation, renewable energy, green agriculture, and innovation, serving Vietnam’s sustainable development.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong on November 24 underlined the need to continue building, preserving and developing an advanced culture deeply imbued with national identity, making it a spiritual foundation and a growth motivation lighting the people’s path ahead.

He said at the National Cultural Conference in Hanoi that looking back on achievements in cultural building and development over the years, especially in 35 years of implementing the “Doi Moi” (Renewal) cause, it can be seen that culture has made great contributions to the national defence and construction.

He highlighted that the awareness of culture has become more comprehensive and deeper in all fields, while cultural products have been more diverse, meeting the social demands. Many traditional cultural values and national cultural heritages have been inherited, preserved and developed, he said, adding that culture in politics and economy has received greater attention. The cultural industry and cultural market have seen positive progress, while cultural exchange and international cooperation and integration have seen new developments, he noted.

Promoting the cultural values and the strength of Vietnamese people will help inspire the aspirations for a prosperous nation, creating a synergy to tap opportunities and overcome challenges, thus successfully fulfiling the target of turning Vietnam into a socialist-oriented developed country in the middle of the 21st century, he said.

The Party leader clarified that boosting cultural development is one of the major contents of the documents adopted at the 13th National Party Congress. For the first time, in the documents, the Party mentioned the cultural issue in a comprehensive and in-depth manner.

The key and consistent stance of the Congress is to strongly inspire the patriotism, self-resilience and aspirations for a wealthy and happy nation, and to promote the synergy of the whole political system, the culture and people of Vietnam, he stressed. In order to continue to build, preserve and promote the national culture, Party General Secretary Trong underscored the need to improve the awareness and leadership capacity of the Party and the State management over the cultural sector to meet the requirements in cultural development and develop Vietnamese people in the period of developing a socialist-oriented market economy as well as stepping up the national industrialisation, modernisation and international integration.

Culture must be placed in the same position with economy, politics and society, he stressed.

The Party chief also underlined the necessity to pay greater attention to the restoration, conservation and promotion of traditional cultural values, tangible and intangible cultural values of regions and ethnic groups in combination with the absorption of the cultural quintessence of the era.

Developing the “soft power” of Vietnamese culture will contribute to strengthening the country’s synergy in the time to come, he stressed.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc has sent a message of condolences to Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and North Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski over great human losses in a fire on November 22 and a bus crash on November 23.

Nine people were killed in the fire at a nursing home in eastern Bulgaria on November 22, while a bus carrying North Macedonian tourists crashed in flames on a highway in western Bulgaria one day later, killing at least 45 people, including 12 children, according to Reuters.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnamese classical poets Ho Xuan Huong and Nguyen Dinh Chieu are among the World Cultural Celebrities whose birth and death anniversaries will be commemorated by UNESCO between 2022 and 2023.

The decision was made during the ongoing 41st General Conference of UNESCO in France’s Paris on November 23.

Vietnam’s nominations for the commemoration of Ho Xuan Huong’s 250th birth and 200th death anniversaries and Nguyen Dinh Chieu’s 200th death anniversary were approved together with 58 other nominations.

Permanent Representative of Vietnam to UNESCO Le Thi Hong Van said the approval of the nominations show that Vietnamese cultural values have been highly regarded by the international community. It also reflects the UNESCO’s effort to promote freedom and equality for all, particularly in education, she noted.

Nguyen Dinh Chieu, also known as teacher Chieu, Trong Phu and Hoi Trai, (1822 – 1888) was born in Binh Duong district, Gia Dinh province (now District 1, Ho Chi Minh City).

The blind poet was not only known for his nationalist and anti-colonial writings against the French colonisation of Cochinchina and his exemplary teaching, but also a popular medical practitioner. He is a typical example for people with disabilities around the world. Despite the blindness, he studied Confucianism and Oriental medicine from relatives.

His typical work of Luc Van Tien (The Tale of Luc Van Tien) is an epic poem written in nom (the old Chinese-based Vietnamese script) in the 1850s. It is regarded as one of the two most recognisable and influential epic poems in Vietnamese history, besides Truyen Kieu (The Tale of Kieu) by great poet Nguyen Du.

His poems tell about the people’s worries in the wartime, their war injuries and losses.

Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1822), whose name means “Spring Essence”, is also one of the most important poets in Vietnam’s history.

Born and living in the time of feudalism, which disregarded the role of women, she became renowned for her poetic skills, especially for her subtly risqué poems which used double-entendres and sexual innuendos to comment several social, religious and political issues.

A concubine, she had the courage to mention topics which were taboo for women at that time.

Previously, the UNESCO commemorated birth anniversaries of five Vietnamese celebrities, namely President Ho Chi Minh, educator Chu Van An, and poets Nguyen Du and Nguyen Trai

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The number of foreign ship arrivals in Vietnam’s seaports topped 59,100 in the first 10 months of 2021, up 30 percent year on year, according to the Vietnam Maritime Administration.

Most of the foreign vessels are small ones, with capacity of less than 200 DWT, operating in the northern province of Quang Ninh.

Meanwhile, the number of Vietnam-flagged vessels rose slightly, by 3 percent, with more than 52,500 arrivals.

In contrast, arrivals by inland waterway vehicles declined by 6 percent to 292,300 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts.

The number of river – sea compatible ship (VR-SB) arrivals at seaports in Vietnam stands at 40,558, equivalent to last year’s level.

The Vietnam Maritime Administration said total cargo throughput at Vietnamese seaports exceeded 588 million tonnes during the reviewed period, up 3 percent from a year earlier. In particular, the volume of container goods grew 10 percent to over 20 million TEUs.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnamese Ambassador to Egypt Tran Thanh Cong led a delegation to visit Damietta province on November 22-23 with the aim to promote cooperation in terms of economy, trade, investment and culture between Vietnam and Egypt in general and localities of the two countries in particular.

At a working session with Governor of Damietta Manal Awad Mikhail, Ambassador Cong emphasised the long-standing friendship between Vietnam and Egypt, saying that the two countries see many opportunities for economic and trade cooperation.

He suggested the Egyptian locality promote cooperation with a locality of Vietnam in fields where the two sides have strengths, saying that the two sides should share information on potential and investment opportunities between their localities to advance cooperation in priority areas such as electronics, industrial park, logistics and seaport.

For her part, Manal expressed her wish that Vietnam as well as its localities will promote cooperation with Damietta in the fields of wooden furniture production and shipbuilding.

Boasting the largest wood processing industry in the Middle East, and its strengths in aquaculture and tourism, Dameitta province wishes to partner with localities and businesses of Vietnam, she said.

The two sides jointly affirmed their desire to enhance information sharing and exchange of business delegations after the COVID-19 pandemic is controlled, towards signing cooperation agreements.

In the framework of the visit, a business forum on potential and opportunities for Vietnam-Egypt cooperation was also arranged, attracting the participation of representatives from nearly 100 local businesses.

Speaking at the event, Ambassador Cong said two-way trade between Vietnam and Egypt does not match their potential, noting that with Vietnam’s open policy, Egyptian businesses have many opportunities to partner with Vietnamese companies.

Participants were updated on investment attraction policies, policies on tax, customs, and incentives for investors, as well as potential and advantages of Vietnam.

Chairman of Damietta’s Chambers of Commerce Mohamed El Ziny expressed a hope that his agency and a corresponding partner in Vietnam will sign a cooperation agreement to connect businesses, exchange information and learn about preferential policies of the two countries, thus promoting bilateral trade and investment cooperation.

On the occasion, the Vietnamese diplomat cut a ribbon to inaugurate a “corner of Vietnamese Book” at the Damietta’s public library, and presented more than 100 book titles on politics, diplomacy, economy and culture to the library.

The embassy also organised a painting exhibition to introduce Vietnamese culture and people to Egyptians and those in Damietta province in particular.

Source: Vietnam News Agency