Day: September 16, 2022

The State Bank of Vietnam set the daily reference exchange rate for the US dollar at 23,283 VND/USD on September 16, up 5 VND from the previous day.

With the current trading band of +/-3 percent, the ceiling rate applicable to commercial banks during the day is 23,980 VND/USD and the floor rate 22,585 VND/USD.

The opening-hour rates at many commercial banks showed an upward trend.

BIDV listed the buying rate at 23,460 VND/USD and the selling rate at 23,740 VND/USD, both up 5 VND from September 15.

Meanwhile, Vietcombank kept both rates unchanged at 23,430 VND/USD (buying) and 23,740 VND/USD (selling).

During the week from September 12-16, the reference exchange rate was adjusted down on the first two days but up on the rest of the week. It ended the week up 30 VND./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s decision to raise credit growth targets for banks is expected to create favourable conditions for businesses to lend capital, including real estate firms, according to experts.

“This is a positive move to inject money into the domestic economy in the post-COVID-19 period, thereby energising the sectors, including services, production, business and real estate,” said Su Ngoc Khuong, senior director of investment, Savills Vietnam.

This information has received special attention from businesses, investors and customers of the real estate market, according to the Savills Vietnam.

In the first half of 2022, capital flows to the real estate market were narrowed due to tight control of credit sources and the bond market’s decline.

According to Khuong, the tightening of credit aimed to help the State prioritise capital for enterprises and projects in good operation. In addition, this move would limit bad credit, making it difficult for banks.

Vietnam is currently one of the countries with the fastest economic growth and recovery in the world in the post-pandemic period. That is helping the country attract a lot of attention and foreign investment.

After the Government reopened international flights, economic sectors have benefited, especially tourism and hotels.

This factor has created favourable conditions for foreign enterprises to enter the Vietnamese market, according to Khuong.

However, there are still legal obstacles in many real estate projects in Vietnam, causing hesitation for domestic and foreign enterprises and investors.

Nguyen Van Dinh, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Real Estate Association, said the real estate market is going through a period of restructuring. As a result, house prices will increase due to rising costs so liquidity will decrease. As a result, investors tend to be more cautious in their investments.

If the difficulties in the property market are not removed, this market may have a long freezing period, causing difficulties for enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary to have supportive policies for the market’s recovery process, said Dinh.

There has been an association between the capital and real estate markets. But it has lacked synchronous development, so the capital market has not had timely support for the real estate market when the channels supplying capital for the property market have been congested.

The Prime Minister has issued Directive 13, including directions of not hindering enterprises with good business results in mobilising capital for recovery and development. This is extremely meaningful because real estate enterprises have faced bottlenecks in getting capital, Dinh said.

Economic expert Dinh Trong Thinh told the Lao dong (Labour) newspaper that it is very necessary to extend credit growth targets for some credit institutions in the current context.

In the past, many enterprises faced difficulties due to lack of capital when the bank stopped disbursing due to running out of credit room, according to Thinh.

He said that the economy is a strong recovery, and increasing the credit growth target will reduce pressure on capital at the enterprises.

Meanwhile, Le Viet Hai, Chairman of Hoa Binh Group, also said that new information about credit room is very interesting in the market. The construction industry will have jobs when the real estate market warms up.

Investors cannot borrow capital to operate their businesses and not pay debts to contractors, leading to a series of difficulties. However, with good projects and reputable investors, there is no reason to control them tightly, Hai said.

He said it is also necessary not to tighten credit for home buyers with real housing needs to boost the market.

In the context of many changes in credit regulations for the real estate industry, Khuong said that investors trust in calling for capital via merger and acquisition (M&A), and they are looking for international M&A consulting firms to get support in connecting with the right partners.

For the M&A trend of foreign investors in Vietnam’s real estate market at present, Khuong said this is a great opportunity for domestic enterprises to improve their capacity to develop projects and attract new customers brought by foreign investors.

“In addition, for listed companies, this will assist them in attracting foreign capital on the stock exchange. Small-sized companies with low financial capacity need to have a strategy to restructure the investment portfolio and ensure the completion of the project’s legal procedures,” Khuong said./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh has signed a decision approving a project to strengthen communications on human rights in Vietnam in the 2023-2028 period, with an aim to enhance public awareness and knowledge of human rights and give people inside and outside the country a better insight of Vietnam’s policies, efforts and achievements in protecting and promoting human rights in the country.

The project also looks to enhance Vietnam’s reputation in the field of human rights in the national, regional and global arena.

The project will cover 63 provinces and cities across the country, countries with large Vietnamese community, priority partners in external relations expansion, and areas where international human rights organisations are based such as New York, Geneva, and Bangkok.

Under the project, by 2028, 100% of State administrative agencies implement the spokesperson mechanism and regularly provide human rights-related information to the press, while 100% of State officials working in human rights, communication and information and external information work as well as 70% officials holding key positions in socio-political organisations at central and provincial levels are kept up to date with human right situation in Vietnam and receive training on human rights communications.

A series of exhibitions on human rights in Vietnam will be held in all 63 localities and a number of foreign localities, 1,000 book titles on human rights will be published and re-published, and the forms of mass communication products will be diversified. The proportion of media products in ethnic and foreign languages as well as those on digital platforms will be raised to 15% to 20% of the total number human rights-related media products.

Another goal is to digitise and popularise on cyber space 100% of statistics and media products produced under the project, while efforts will be made to minimise fake and wrongful information on human rights.

At the same time, Vietnam will strive to complete the implementation of accepted international recommendations on the strengthening of communications on human rights, while increasing the popularisation of international law regarding human rights as well as the Party and State’s policies and laws in the field.

The project will encourage the popularisation of moral value, humanity and other positive values and fine traditions./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

A delegation of the Vietnamese National Assembly (NA), led by Vice Chairman of the NA Committee for Foreign Affairs Don Tuan Phong, have attended the Regional Seminar for the Asia Pacific Region Parliaments on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The seminar, the third of its kind, was held by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in collaboration with the NA of Pakistan both in person and via video teleconference.

This year’s event followed the success of the first seminar launched by the IPU and the Vietnamese NA in Ho Chi Minh City in May 2017 and the second hosted by the Mongolian NA in Ulan Bator in May 2019.

Participants shared experience in realising the SDGs, and stressed the need to strengthen cooperation and awareness and to accelerate parliamentary actions to translate the SGDs into reality in the region.

The seminar featured four sessions – “Envisioning inclusive development: “Socio-economic challenges in Asia-Pacific,” “Parliamentary mechanisms and practices to institutionalise the SDGs,” “Women at the centre of the development agenda,” and “Building resilience to preserve our common future,” There were also three breakout sessions tackling inequalities – “Ending hunger and malnutrition,” “Promoting quality education and decent work for youth” and “Ensuring equitable access to healthcare.”

Speaking at the event, the Vietnamese delegation expressed sympathy for Pakistan over its losses in the historic flood and believed that the country will soon overcome the aftermaths. They also held that impacts of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical uncertainties will pose various challenges to achieving the SDGs.

Vietnam also shared experience and put forth a number of recommendations during the discussions on “Ensuring equitable access to healthcare” and “Women at the centre of the development agenda.”

The Vietnamese delegation also had meetings with Speaker of the Pakistani NA Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, IPU President Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Chairman of Pakistan’s NA Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Mohsin Dawar and Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Farooq Hamid Naek, during which the two sides discussed expanding relations between the two legislatures. Both sides agreed that there are plenty of room for the ties to grow further in the areas of politics, economy, trade, culture, tourism and others./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam Report JSC and VietNamNet online newspaper on September 15 announced the Profit500 list featuring the top 500 most profitable enterprises in Vietnam this year.

Prominent in the list are Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam), Samsung Electronics Thai Nguyen Co. Ltd., Hoa Phat Group JSC, Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel), Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) and Vietnam Electricity (EVN), Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank), Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB) and Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank).

Contrary to concerns about a slowdown of the world’s economy, Vietnam is showing signs of strong recovery with many indicators already exceeding pre-pandemic levels, according to General Director of Vietnam Report Vu Dang Vinh.

It is attributed to solid growth in exports of manufactured and processed industrial products to traditional markets. Total import and export turnover of goods in the first eight months of this year reached 497.64 billion USD, of which, exports increased by 17.3% while imports rose by 13.6%. The recovery of domestic demand, especially for services, also contributed to the growth.

Retail sales of consumer goods and services in August increased by 50.2% over the same period last year, of which sales of goods increased by 1.3 times, up 20% compared to the same period in 2019.

Total retail sales of consumer goods and services in the first eight months of this year were estimated to increase by 19.3% over the same period last year.

The reopening of borders in mid-March 2022 has revived the country’s tourism industry, with 1.4 million foreign arrivals recorded in the eight months, up 12.7 times compared to the same period last year.

A survey of the most profitable enterprises in Vietnam conducted by Vietnam Report in August also recorded a very positive recovery. More than two-thirds of the businesses said their revenue has returned or exceeded pre-pandemic levels

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnamese Ambassador to Thailand Phan Chi Thanh paid a courtesy call to Governor of Bangkok Chadchart Sittipunt on September 15 to discuss promoting locality-to-locality cooperation.

Ambassador Thanh expressed his delight at the development of bilateral ties in various areas over the past 46 years. Thailand is now the biggest ASEAN trade partner of Vietnam. As of June 2022, Thailand was the ninth biggest investor out of 140 countries and territories investing in Vietnam with over 600 valid projects worth more than 13 billion USD.

He noted that the two countries will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their bilateral strategic partnership next year.

The governor spoke highly of Vietnam’s rapid developments in recent years with abundant and skilled workforce. A number of Thai enterprises are investing in Vietnam in the fields of energy, agriculture, retail and real estate.

Host and guest agreed to facilitate the resumption of visits and collaboration in economy, trade, investment promotion, tourism, cultural exchange, education and people-to-people exchange between Bangkok and its Vietnamese twinning localities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the central province of Thua Thien-Hue, as well as other Vietnamese localities.

Both sides pledged to work to promote ties between major Vietnamese cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok via co-chairing conferences and seminars to share experience in urban transportation management, flooding prevention, air pollution and water salinisation.

Ambassador Thanh expressed readiness to connect Bangkok with Vietnamese localities to boost bilateral ties in the near future./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Barriers and warning signs in both Vietnamese and English have been erected and police officers have been deployed to enforce the closure of the famous train street in downtown Hanoi from September 16.

Tourists seeking the unique sight are also turned away.

Hoan Kiem district’s authorities said they will close and revoke the licences of all coffee shops lining the rail line by September 17 over safety concerns.

Some sections of track along the Hanoi-Dong Dang railway line, where trains pass close to residential houses, have been popular with foreign tourists for many years. However, the spot’s popularity also poses a major safety hazard.

The move has received understanding from most people.

Nguyen Thi Huong, a resident in Dien Bien Phu ward, thought it was a good idea and welcomed the move to improve safety.

She said: “When the coffee shops are open, this railway is packed with people, including foreigners and locals, especially when the train is coming. They stand beside the railway line, and I have to stop them from gathering around to prevent any accidents caused by the trains.

Student Do Dinh Vu agreed: “I usually come here to have a cup of coffee. However, I think it is necessary to ban coffee shops here because the pavement is very small, and some people even sit on the railway, which is very dangerous for them when there’s a train.”

While many tourists who came to take photos and videos of the famous cafe were quite disappointed, Australian Jamie Williams doesn’t think it will affect tourism much in the long run.

She said: “I think the closure of the coffee shops will impact tourism a little bit, but I don’t think it will be a huge countrywide.”

The street was ordered to close in late 2019, but after Vietnam reopened in March this year following two years of border closure, the coffee shops opened too and foreign tourists have been flocking to ‘train street’ once more./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency