Day: December 27, 2021

Vietnam needs to prepare personnel to meet the requirements of higher positions in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions, and continue to send candidates, especially female staff, to the UN headquarters, Colonel Mac Duc Trong, deputy head of the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations, has said.

Talking to the Vietnam News Agency, Trong stressed the need to participate more in UN peacekeeping operations, and deploy tasks in several tasks such as logistics, liaison and military police, adding that this is a long-term goal set out by the department.

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Colonel Mac Duc Trong, deputy head of the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations (Photo: VNA)

According to him, participating in UN peacekeeping operations is a major policy of the Vietnamese Party and State, and also an important task of the Vietnam People’s Army in the new period, contributing to realising the foreign policy of peace, cooperation, development, multilateralisation and diversification of international relations.

Vietnam’s engagement in UN peacekeeping operations over the past seven years has achieved many positive results, and at the same time opened up many new directions of deployment, becoming a prominent mark in diplomatic defence, he stated.

The colonel said that recently, for the first time, Vietnam made debut a sapper unit to participate in UN peacekeeping, marking a new development step in expertise and level.

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Vietnam’s sapper unit No.1 and level-2 field hospital No.4 make their debut (Photo: VNA)

Compared to the level-2 field hospitals Vietnam has deployed before, the sapper unit is larger in number with 184 professional officers and soldiers. In terms of equipment, the unit will deploy about 2,000 tonnes of equipment to the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), including around 150 machines.

In the coming time, the set goal is to successfully deploy Vietnam’s first sapper unit to the UN peacekeeping mission and complete all the tasks assigned by the UN for the humanitarian mission.

Vietnam must continue to keep up the good quality of its level-2 field hospitals to maintain the existing reputation among the missions, he added.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Snow fell on the top of Fansipan Mountain in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai – the highest peak in Indochina – on December 26 when a strong cold spell hit the north and north central provinces.

At present, the temperature continues to decrease, low and mountainous areas in Lao Cai and the two region experience biting cold.

According to the Lao Cai hydro-meteorological station, the temperature at Fansipan Mountain will continue to drop, and sleet or frost is forecast to continue.

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Snow fell on the top of Fansipan Mountain. (Photo: VNA)

The National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting reported that on the morning of December 27, the cold spell continued to affect the north and north central regions, with lowest temperatures dropping to 9 – 12 degrees Celsius in low areas, and from 4 – 7 degree Celsius in high mountainous areas.

The cold spell is also expected to bring moderate to heavy rains and low temperatures in the central region from Quang Tri to Binh Dinh on December 27.

The region is forecast to be struck by rain and thunderstorms, with whirlwinds, lightning, hail and strong winds expected in some locations.

This extreme weather phenomenon severely affects local lives and production. The temperature is likely to continue dropping in the coming days.

People are advised to keep updated on the weather forecast and keep warm, especially the elderly, children.

Those in central localities need to be alert for signs of flash floods.

Local authorities have been advised to actively roll out measures to protect and keep crops and cattle warm, particularly in mountainous locations .

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam’s forest coverage reached 42.01 percent in 2021, up 0.11 percent from a year earlier, according to the Forest Protection Department.

The department also reported a 12-percent decline in the number of violations of the Law on Forestry this year while the area of forest lost due to fires, deforestation, and natural disasters plunged 33 percent year on year.

The country has seen positive progress in forest protection, wildfire prevention and fighting compared to the previous year, it said.

In 2022, the department plans to focus on developing legal documents and strengthening management in forest protection, forest fire prevention and fighting. It will also closely monitor the conversion of forest land for other purposes locally, get tougher on violations and enhance international cooperation in forest protection and development.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

A total of 100,000 ha of rubber plantations of Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG) are expected to get an international sustainable forest management certificate in accordance with the Vietnam Forest Certification Scheme (VFCS) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) in the first quarter of 2022, according to PEFC in Southeast Asia.

So far, 55,000 ha of rubber plantations of VRG has been awarded the certificate.

With the existing certified area, 85,000 tonnes of natural rubber and 300,000 tonnes of certified sustainable rubber wood will be exploited for commercial production.

2021 can be seen a pivotal year, with major turning points for natural rubber and sustainable rubber wood production in Vietnam. Dozens of new sustainable forest management certificates have been granted to forest owners and the PEFC Chain of Custody certificates to natural rubber and rubber wood processing plants and purchasing companies.

PEFC is the largest forest certification system in the world and the certification system of choice for small forest owners, with more than 300 million hectares in 49 nations. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, PEFC provides independent assessment, endorsement, and recognition of national forest certification systems.

PEFC in Southeast Asia has built strategic partnerships to make a sustainable rubber industry a reality. PEFC’s efforts are rooted in the fact that 85 percent of the world’s natural rubber comes from Southeast Asia, with the majority of it produced by millions of smallholders on small scale.

Over the past years PEFC has been working on pilot projects to certify groups of smallholders in Thailand, expand chain of custody certification for rubber wood in Malaysia, and bring new supplies of certified rubber online in Vietnam. Those projects set the stage for a transformation in 2021.

From the demand side, PEFC partnered with Weber and Schaer, one of the largest natural rubber trading houses, and Unilin, a global leader in hardwood flooring and panelling that relies on rubberwood.

Weber and Schaer cited the large-scale certification of VRG as the trigger for them to get certified, adding that this is a strong indication that demand exists for environmentally friendly rubber, and that supplier certification can trigger certification of buyers.

In addition to VRG, PEFC and its partners in Vietnam are also actively supporting groups of households in Thua Thien-Hue, Lang Son and Yen Bai provinces, with about 6,000 hectares of forest certified for sustainable forest management in accordance with VFCS/PEFC standards.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The State Bank of Vietnam set the daily reference exchange rate at 23,174 VND/USD on December 27, down 19 VND from the last working day of previous week (December 24).

With the current trading band of +/-3 percent, the ceiling rate applicable to commercial banks during the day is 23,869 VND/USD and the floor rate 22,479 VND/USD.

The opening-hour rates at commercial banks increased.

At 8:30 am, Vietcombank listed the buying rate at 22,690 VND/USD and the selling rate at 23,000 VND/USD, both up 5 VND from the rates at the same time on December 24.

BIDV raised both rates by 10 VND, listing the buying rate at 22,730 VND/USD and the selling rate at 23,010 VND/USD.

During the week from December 20-24, the daily exchange rate fluctuated variably but ended the week up 9 VND.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The Ministry of Transport has been allowed to decide on the resumption of regular commercial flights to foreign destinations with a high level of safety against COVID-19 in line with the spirit of safely, flexibly adapting to and effectively controlling the pandemic.

In his reply to the request from national-flag carrier Vietnam Airlines asking for permission to reopen regular flights to Europe and Australia, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh urged the ministry to coordinate with relevant ministries, sectors and localities to consider the request and make decisions on its own.

Earlier at a meeting on December 10, Minh agreed with a pilot plan on the resumption of international commercial flights from January 1, 2022.

Under the plan, regular international passenger flights will be reopened to areas with a high safety level which are Beijing/Guangzhou (China), Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (the Republic of Korea), Taipei (Taiwan – China), Bangkok (Thailand), Singapore, Vientiane (Laos), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), and San Francisco/Los Angeles (the US). The plan will be carried out following the Ministry of Health’s pandemic prevention guidance for arrivals and begin on January 1 next year.

The Ministries of Health, Public Security, and Information and Communications, meanwhile, have been assigned to issue medical declaration software that is generally applicable to air travel to facilitate the declaration of passengers, the operation of aviation enterprises, and the medical monitoring, control and tracing of arrivals.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam’s aquaculture output is estimated at 4.75 million tonnes this year, rising by some 4.17 percent from 2020, according to the Directorate of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

Of which, the output of tra fish, a major foreign currency earner, stood at 1.5 million tonnes, equivalent to last year’s figure.

The directorate predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic may continue developing complicatedly in 2022, directly affecting logistics and subsequently production and business activities of the fisheries sector. Processing firms may face material shortages in the first quarter of next year.

Given this, MARD will order localities to press on with farming so as to ensure sufficient supply of materials for processing in 2022, the directorate added.

This year’s aquatic product exports are estimated at 8.89 billion USD, posting a year-on-year increase of 5.7 percent, data from the Directorate of Fisheries show.

Source: Vietnam News Agency