Day: February 2, 2023

Vietnamese striker Nguyen Tien Linh has been listed among the 25 nominees for the Best Footballer in Asia 2022 award organised by Titan Sports of China.

Striker Nguyen Tien Linh has been nominated for the Best Footballer in Asia award for the second consecutive year, alongside 24 other players who had great performances last year.

The list of 25 nominees also includes many superstars such as Son Heung-min (the Republic of Korea – Tottenham), Kaoru Mitota (Japan – Brighton), Mehdi Taremi (Iran – Porto) or Takehiro Tomiyasu (Japan – Arsenal), among others.

Linh is one of the three Southeast Asian players on the list, along with Thailand’s defender Theerathon Bunmathan (Buriram United) and Singaporean striker Ikhsan Fandi (BG Pathum United).

There are also Asian superstars on the list such as the Republic of Korea’s Son Heung-min (Tottenham Hotspur), Japanese winger Kaoru Mitoma (Brighton & Hove Albion), Iranian striker Mehdi Taremi (FC Porto) and Japanese defender Takehiro Tomiyasu (Arsenal)./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

A thematic exhibition on “The sacred Buddhist land of Tay Yen Tu – A thousand-year-old relic from the ground” was opened on February 1 in the northern province of Bac Giang with nearly 500 Buddhist artifacts and images being displayed.

The exhibition is part of the province’s Culture-Tourism Week launched from February 1-6, featuring 15 cultural, sport, and tourism activities.

Visitors to the exhibition can see artifacts and images of pagodas and towers built from the Ly – Tran Dynasties (11th-14th century), the Le Trung Hung Dynasty (the 17th-18th century) and the Nguyen Dynasty (19th century) as well as images about the process of archaeological excavation at relics, vestiges of ancient religious works associated with Truc Lam Zen Buddhist sect in Tay Yen Tu.

They are said to be important scientific evidence to build a dossier seeking UNESCO world heritage recognition for the Yen Tu Monuments and Landscapes Complex in three provinces of Quang Ninh, Hai Duong, and Bac Giang.

Cultural-spiritual tourism is a key tourism product of Bac Giang that expects to attract about 2 million visitors this year./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Minister of State Greg Hands of the UK Department for International Trade arrived in Hanoi on February 1 for high-level trade talks on how the UK joining of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will boost the economic firepower of the world’s most dynamic trade bloc, according to the British Embassy.

Vietnam was the first leg of his three-day Asia-Pacific tour, which also includes Malaysia and Singapore. The visit aims to promote the UK’s engagement in the CPTPP, of which Vietnam is a founding member.

It was also an opportunity to mark the 50th anniversary of the UK – Vietnam diplomatic relations and discuss the thriving bilateral trade relationship, which has increased 12.4% over the last year and is valued at 5.9 billion GBP (7.3 billion USD), the embassy noted.

With the next round of CPTPP negotiations coming soon, the minister expressed the UK’s desire to finalise accession at the earliest opportunity.

Speaking of his visit, Minister Greg Hands said: “Joining CPTPP will add even more economic firepower to this exciting and dynamic trade alliance, adding 2 trillion GBP to CPTPP’s GDP.”/.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam and Trinidad and Tobago officially established the diplomatic ties on February 1.

Ambassador Dang Hoang Giang, Permanent Representative of Vietnam, and Ambassador Dennis Francis Smith, Representative of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations (UN), on behalf of the two governments, signed a joint statement on the establishment of the diplomatic ties between the two countries at New York.

Accordingly, Vietnam and Trinidad and Tobago agreed to exchange diplomatic representatives at the ambassadorial-level under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

On the same day, the document was sent to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for circulation and to UN member countries for information.

With the establishment of diplomatic relations with Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam has had official diplomatic relations with all 35 countries in America as well as 192 countries worldwide, including 190 out of 193 UN member countries. This demonstrates the foreign policy of diversification and multilateralisation of international relations, and attaching importance to developing relations with Latin America and the Caribbean.

Vietnam, Trinidad and Tobago set up diplomatic ties hinh anh 2

At the signing ceremony (Photo: VNA)

On the occasion, Ambassador Giang and Ambassador Smith had a discussion on measures to promote cooperation between the two nations. They affirmed that the establishment of diplomatic ties will help open all-around cooperation in the future.

Talking to the Vietnam News Agency’s correspondents in New York, Smith spoke highly of the cooperation potential between the two countries, stressing that Trinidad and Tobago has cooperated with Vietnam within multilateral mechanisms of the UN.

The Caribbean country looks forwards to bilateral cooperative relations with the Southeast Asian nation in various fields, including culture, people-to-people exchange, agriculture, fishery, energy, engineering and tourism, the diplomat said.

Establishing diplomatic relations with a self-reliant country and a reliable partner like Vietnam is a milestone in the foreign policy of Trinidad and Tobago, he stressed.

The two diplomats agreed to continue sharing information to explore strengths and potential for cooperation between the two countries, especially oil and gas exploitation, tourism and agriculture. They pledged to strengthen close coordination at the UN and other multilateral forums./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The European Union (EU) and Singapore on February 1 signed in Brussels the EU-Singapore Digital Partnership (EUSDP) that will lead to a digital trade agreement to enable consumers and businesses to transact online more seamlessly and at lower costs.

The pact aims to boost participation in the digital economy by imparting relevant skills to workers in both jurisdictions and transforming their businesses and public services.

Other areas of collaboration include digital trade facilitation, trusted data flows, electronic payments and standards. The deal will also focus on emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, digital identities, and 5G/6G communication networks.

Signatories were Singapore’s Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations S. Iswaran and Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market.

The EU is Singapore’s second-largest digital partner for trading services and fourth-largest for trading goods. Singapore is also the EU’s largest trading partner in ASEAN. There are about 12,000 EU businesses in Singapore./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

The Jakarta Provincial Government is taking a series of measures, including implementing an electronic road pricing (ERP) policy, to lessen congestion in the capital city.

Head of the Jakarta Transportation Office Syafrin Liputo said the agency is currently drafting an electronic traffic control regulation to apply to the ERP system on 25 inner-city and inter-provincial roads to reduce congestion.

It has also encouraged the use of public transport, contributing to increasing the sustainability in urban traffic management.

Syafrin emphasised the urgency of electronic traffic control, as the investment rate in urban infrastructure is much lower than the increasing number of personal vehicles.

The ERP has been implemented by Singapore since 1998 and is one of the most effective methods to deal with traffic jams since then.

In 2019, Jakarta was one of the 10 most congested cities in the world. It applied a number of measures to address the issue but they did not bring long-term effects for the city./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam must start monitoring and issuing carbon certificates to exporters and retailers in response to the EU’s recently passed carbon levy, said industry insiders and policymakers.

The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) by the European Parliament (EP), according to the EP, is to “put a fair price on the carbon emitted during the production of carbon-intensive goods that are entering the EU, and to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries.”

The bloc requires exporters to report their commodities’ carbon footprints, on which a tax may be levied should carbon emissions during the production of said commodities exceed the EU’s carbon regulations.

Instead of buying the EU’s carbon certificate, Vietnamese businesses could take steps to reduce their own carbon footprints during production, experts said.

The mechanism will start with commodities with higher carbon footprints including steel, cement, fertiliser, aluminium and electricity, which altogether account for 94% of the continent’s carbon emissions.

Andrew Wyatt, deputy head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Vietnam, urged the central Government to establish policies to monitor and issue carbon certificates to Vietnamese exporters and producers by 2025.

He said IUCN, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) have been working closely together in recent years to build policy frameworks related to the global carbon market.

Industry experts said CBAM will affect Vietnamese major exporters and retailers first, especially producers and exporters of products with higher carbon footprints, giving smaller players some time to prepare.

Vietnamese businesses, however, have been anticipating the new carbon tax for quite some time as many already implemented measures to reduce their carbon emissions.

Ho Quoc Luc, Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Sao Ta Food JSC, said solar panels have become the norm among Vietnamese seafood producers in the last few years. In addition, they have been actively seeking ways to turn their by-products into new products instead of discarding them into the environment.

To produce greater results, however, there was a need to establish a set of common standards for the entire supply chain, he said.

Nguyen Thi Lien, Deputy General Director of Phong Phu International JSC, said her company has been taking numerous steps to reduce pollution during the last ten years including lowering energy consumption, water waste, and chemical waste, and replacing old machinery gradually.

Pascal Canfin, Chair of the EU’s Committee on CBAM, said the mechanism is the EU’s first attempt to ensure fairness among European businesses, who are subject to the continent’s strict carbon rules, and international businesses.

Canfin added CBAM is part of the EU’s “do-more” attitude to sustainable development, environmental preservation and worker protection.

CBAM is to become a key pillar in the EU’s climate change policy, making it the first trade bloc to impose a carbon tax on imported goods, on top of already existing environmental taxes./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency