Business in brief in 07 Aug 2012
Representatives from 25 businesses of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Malaysian State of Sarawak have arrived in HCM City to seek investment opportunities. At a reception on August 6, HCM City authorities briefed the Malaysian guests on the city’s development potential, its investment climate, infrastructure construction and real estate development. Sarawak businesses expressed their desires to cooperate with HCM City and invest in those areas, as well as in education-training, and the application of high technology in agriculture. They also hoped that HCM City residents will visit, study and work in Sarawak which is the largest state of Malaysia, but houses only 1.2 million people.
SMS-Slovak Medical Services and Progress Trading, the two companies from the Czech Republic, have just announced new investment projects in Vietnam. Progress Trading will supply aircraft spare parts made in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. Vestrovsky Bohuslave, a representative of Progress trading, said his company eyes Vietnam as a potential market and it plans to manufacture aircraft and run training courses for Vietnamese pilots and technical staff. Established in 2000, Progess Trading specializes in manufacturing small aircraft and helicopters for civil services. Meanwhile, SMS-Slovak Medical Services will provide medical supplies for orthopaedics and primary health care. SMS representatives will make a fact-finding tour of big Vietnamese hospitals to explore their needs.
The Vietnam Record Organization has submitted a profile to the Asian Record Organization and the Guinness World Record Organization to recognize “Vietnam as the only country in the world that exports star apples.” The star apple has been used for centuries and the Lo Ren star apple is a favorite variety with customers around the world. The Vinh Kim Lo Ren Star Apple Co-operative exports more than 10 tons of star apples to the UK and Canada each year. It plans to ship 50 tons to Russia and Germany alone in 2012. Businesses in the southern provinces are expanding to export the fruit to the US and other countries in Asia. Vietnam is currently the only country in the world that is exporting the fruit. Other countries such as Cambodia, the Philippines, India, Thailand and Australia plant star apples only for domestic use.
Vietnam will give 5,000 tons of rice to flood-hit North Korea, official media reported Monday during a visit by Pyongyang’s ceremonial head of state. The pledge came as North Korea’s Kim Yong-Nam met senior Vietnamese officials on a two-day trip aimed at strengthening diplomatic ties and expanding economic cooperation, state-run Voice of Vietnam radio reported. Floods in North Korea have killed 169 people, left 400 others missing and washed away, and inundated tens of thousands of hectares of cropland since late June, the country’s official news agency reported on Saturday.
Babcock & Wilcox Beijing Company (BWBC) has secured a $300m subcontract from Daelim Industrial Company to supply equipment for PetroVietnam’s 1,200MW Thai Binh II power plant which is being built in Vietnam. South Korea based engineering and construction firm Daelim Industrial Company is the lead contractor of the project. Under the terms of the contract, BWBC will design and manufacture two 600MW boilers, boiler auxiliaries and two wet flue gas desulfurization units for the coal-fired power plant. BWBC is an unconsolidated Chinese joint venture of The Babcock & Wilcox Company, within its Power Generation segment. Zhejiang Tiandi Environmental Protection Engineering Company, a licensee of B&W, will supply both wet FGD units for the project.
Vietnamese seas and people are major highlights of a Vietnam National Day was held at the 2012 Expo in Yeosu, the Republic of Korea (RoK), on August 6. The Vietnamese exhibition was divided into four sections introducing the country’s seas and islands, rice paddies, the wild life of salagane, a precious bird species, as well as unique, traditional handicrafts. Another section promoted Vietnamese and Korean tourism, focusing on Ha Long Bay and Jeju Island, which were voted two of the world’s new seven natural wonders in 2011. The Vietnam National Day is one of a series of events to mark 20 years of Vietnam-RoK diplomatic ties.
About 940 enterprises who suspended operations in the first half of the year restarted business last month, said Vietnam General Department of Taxation. The high number was seen as a positive signal for the market following the closure of nearly 22,000 businesses in the first six months of the year. The department added that the recovery was led by non-State firms. To cap it off, last month nearly 47,000 new enterprises were also registered, including 5,000 State-run businesses. According to the department’s second-quarter report, pre-tax profits for all enterprises in Vietnam in the second quarter was 2.5 per cent higher than in the first quarter. Pre-tax profit earned by State-owned enterprises increased by 5.8 per cent over the first quarter of the year.
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said here yesterday he hoped the United States would offer a scheme of tariff preferences to Vietnam and create favorable conditions for two-way trade. Hai, hosting a reception for US House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, said he welcomed Dreier’s support in granting permanent trade relations with Vietnam, which helped normalize economic and commerce relations. He also spoke highly of the support of the Chairman and other US members of the House for pushing negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement with Vietnam. He said he hoped Dreier would continue to support the relationship between the two countries and support recognition of market economy status in Vietnam. Dreier replied that the opportunity to deepen economic relations between the US and Vietnam, especially in the context of the Asia-Pacific region, was developing dynamically.
The international ratings agency Moody’s has assigned a standalone credit assessment of E+ to Military Bank. The rating, which translates into b2 on the long-term scale, reflected the bank’s fairly healthy reported financial metrics, which were comparable to higher-rated regional peers and included consistent profitability in recent years despite last year’s decreasing trend, Moody’s said. The rating was also supported by the bank’s comfortable liquidity and good reported asset quality, which received an A rating. Moody’s earlier gave Asia Commercial Bank a standalone credit assessment of A due to the bank’s good profitability, better-than-average asset quality, good efficiency and ample liquidity.
Credit rating agency Fitch last week assigned Vietinbank a long-term B rating and a recovery rating of RR4 on US$250 million worth of outstanding five-year, 8% senior notes due in 2017. The notes were rated at the same level as Vietinbank’s long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating of B, which was based on Fitch’s expectation of extraordinary State support to the bank in the event of need. The notes constitute direct, unsubordinated and senior unsecured obligations of the bank, and rank equally with all its other unsecured and unsubordinated obligations. Vietinbank successfully issued the notes in May, making it the first financial institution in Vietnam to raise capital on global financial markets by issuing senior notes. At the end of last year, Vietinbank was the second largest bank in Vietnam with audited assets worth a total of VND461 trillion ($21.9 billion).
The Government will not use funds from tax collections to bail out enterprises, Government Office Minister Vu Duc Dam told a televised Q&A session on Sunday. The question was raised by TV viewers concerning the establishment of a national debt trading company with the capacity to buy up about VND100 trillion (US$4.8 billion) worth of bad debt. Dam said there were many solutions to handle bad debt and that policy choices were not focused solely on establishing a national debt trading company. Regarding concerns that the nation’s economy might fall into recession, Dam said that this was not likely to be happened although he admitted the economy was facing difficulties. Economic growth continued to be positive, even it was slower than in recent years and below targets.
Doosan Vina has just shipped 68 tons of chemical processing equipment to the Queensland Curtis Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in Australia, the company announced yesterday in a statement. The contract for the Queensland Curtis LNG project was signed with Bechtel International for eight custom-engineered storage tanks. The tanks are designed for storing de-mineralized and filtered water, diesel fuel, waste oil and as collection vessels. Last November, under an earlier contract, Doosan Vina’s Chemical Processing Equipment business unit shipped two sets of Ethylene Surger Drums and two sets of Ethylene Purger Absorbers that weighed over 130 tons to this client. Since commencing operations in 2008, the Chemical Processing Equipment unit has shipped over 8,000 tons of high tech chemical processing equipment to clients abroad.
