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Tag: Vietnam

  • Ministry wants betting to be allowed on more global football events

    Ministry wants betting to be allowed on more global football events

    The Ministry of Finance wants more global football tournaments added to the list of those on which people can bet.

    The list comprises 27 events, including 15 leagues in Europe, Asia, North America and South America and 12 tournaments held every two or four years.

    Gamblers will be allowed to bet on matches Vietnam play, including in the World Cup, AFC U-23 Championship, Olympics, Asian Cup, and U-20 World Cup.

    The minimum and maximum bets on football matches, horse races and dog races will remain unchanged from 2017 at VND10,000 ($0.44) and VND1 million.

    A 2017 government decree allows Vietnamese to bet on all football tournaments run by FIFA.

    But gambling remains illegal in Vietnam. There are a handful of licensed casinos, but only holders of foreign passports are allowed to gamble there.

    Vietnamese are known for their love of gambling. It is estimated they spend at least $800 million a year betting overseas, mainly in Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong.

    Illegal betting and gambling are rife within the country too. Da Nang City police last year arrested a man running an online football gambling ring with stakes of nearly $1 million.

  • Digital media startup raises another $2.7 mln

    Digital media startup raises another $2.7 mln

    Vietcetera, a digital media startup, raised $2.7 million in a pre-series A round last month after earlier raising $700,000 in March.

    The pre-series A round was attended by U.S. venture capital firm North Base Media, Indonesian investment company Go-Ventures and early-stage venture capital firm East Ventures, Philippine digital lifestyle network Summit Media, Japanese venture capital firms Genesia Ventures and Z Venture Corporation.

    Vietcetera plans to use the money to expand its content catalog by adding new shows and podcasts, and further developing its mobile app.

    In March, Genesia Ventures had led the seed funding round with an investment of $700,000.

    Established in 2016, Vietcetera produces content in Vietnamese and English, ranging from articles about business and stories about lifestyles to podcasts.

    Vietcetera said it has over 20 million users a month, mostly from Vietnam, of whom 60 percent are women. It also said it has witnessed “rapid audience and revenue growth” as users in Vietnam, especially from Gen Z (those born in 1996 or later), demand high-quality multimedia content.

    One of Vietcetera’s most viral content is a rap music video featuring former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, David Kritenbrink. The video was released in February to welcome the Lunar New Year.

    According to a report by Google, Temasek Holdings Pte and Bain & Co, Vietnam’s digital media market is expected to surge to $7billion in 2025 from $3.3 billion in 2020, and its digital economy to $52 billion, including $29 billion from e-commerce, from $14 billion.

  • Hanoi to restrict motorbike shipper timings

    Hanoi to restrict motorbike shipper timings

    Hanoi will restrict motorbike shippers’ timings to between 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, starting Monday, while requiring continued compliance with all pandemic prevention and safety measures.

    All shippers, accordingly, will have to furnish a certificate with negative PCR or rapid antigen test results in line with health ministry regulations.

    The timing restrictions are needed because the motorbike delivery service is hard to control and carries the risk of further spreading the coronavirus, officials said.

    Hanoi has allowed delivery people from supermarkets, e-commerce platforms and postal services but not from ride-hailing companies like Grab, Be and Gojek since July 24.

    Hanoi has undergone several social distancing orders since late July. It has recorded over 3,700 infections in the ongoing outbreak that hit the nation late April.

    City authorities have said that they would extend strict lockdown orders in most parts of the city after September 6.

  • Samsung to expand northern Vietnam plant

    Samsung to expand northern Vietnam plant

    Samsung is set to expand its plant in the northern province of Bac Ninh this year to increase its production capacity of foldable devices.

    The company would kick off the expansion project within the second half of this year, targeting full operation by the end of 2021 or early next year at the latest.

    This is to increase Samsung’s annual production capacity of foldables by 47 percent from the current 17 million to 25 million.

    Experts say once Samsung completes the expansion, the company would be able to produce 10 million units of Galaxy Z Fold models and 15 million units of Z Flip models a year.

    Samsung’s decision to ramp up capacity is mainly driven by soaring market demand. Its third-generation foldable models recorded 920,000 pre-orders in South Korea, 1.8 times more than its latest smartphone Galaxy S21, the report stated.

    “Samsung’s factories that make foldable devices are already operating at full capacity. Samsung has no option but to expand its facilities,” a source told the newspaper.

    It will likely add three more production lines to its current seven, which would allow the company to manage the production volume more flexibly, the source added.

    Samsung, the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, has six plants and is building a new research and development center in Hanoi, which would open next year. Around 3,000 Vietnamese engineers are set to be employed there.

    The South Korean company has invested over $17.7 billion in Vietnam, has 110,000 employees and exported over $56 billion worth of products last year.

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  • Vietnam considers tightening import tax on e-commerce deliveries

    Vietnam considers tightening import tax on e-commerce deliveries

    The Ministry of Finance is considering limiting the import of low-value packages through e-commerce platforms to close a suspected loophole.

    It wants to issue a new decree to limit each organization or individual buyer to be free of import tax on four orders at most each month.

    The proposal came amid the rising popularity of shopping on e-commerce platforms in Vietnam, with many products delivered directly from China.

    Vietnam currently does not apply an import tax on packages with a value of VND1 million ($44) or lower delivered via postal and delivery services.

    However, because there is no limit on the number of packages being sent, many buyers take advantage of this policy and split their goods into small packages to avoid tax, according to the Ministry of Finance.

    In the first six months last year, Hanoi alone imported $1 billion worth of products via postal and delivery services. The value in June was five times that of January, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Finance.

    A Hanoi company that imports products for Shopee and Lazada saw its value of imported products surging 50 times year-on-year to $70 million in the first quarter of 2021, the ministry said.

    Vietnam’s e-commerce market has seen an average annual growth rate of 25-30 percent in the last five years, according to Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM).

    Should the growth rate be maintained, Vietnam would rank third in e-commerce market size in Southeast Asia by 2025, behind Indonesia and Thailand.

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  • Vietnamese Seafood export falls in August

    Vietnamese Seafood export falls in August

    Vietnam’s seafood export turnovers stood at $520 million in August, down 36 percent against the same month last year due to Covid-19 outbreaks.

    Last month, only 30-40 percent of seafood enterprises in the south ensured the stay-at-work mode, mobilizing 40-40 percent of employees to work, eat and sleep at factories, so their production capacity dropped 50-60 percent, said the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters & Processors (VASEP).

    Meanwhile, material supply chains were broken or met with difficulty in transport. Seafood firms saw higher input costs and freight ones, and some exporters failed to deliver goods on time, losing clients to their foreign rivals.

    However, seafood export turnovers in the first eight months of this year rose 6 percent on-year to $5.5 billion.

    The VASEP forecast seafood export turnovers will decrease at least 20 percent on-year to $660 million in September, because the pandemic is still progressing complexly in the South, while vaccination among workers in industrial parks and export processing zones is limited.

    Some southern provinces, including Soc Trang, Cau Mau, Bac Lieu and Kien Giang, which are major prawn producers and exporters, have contained the pandemic fairly well, so they are expected to export more prawns and shrimps in the remaining months of this year.

    Major catfish producing and exporting provinces are still being hit hard by the pandemic, with over half of factories having to close down, so tra fish export is unlikely to bounce back in September.

    HCMC and localities in the Mekong Delta, home to many squid, octopus, tuna processing plants, are still experiencing complex Covid-19 situations, so their seafood production and export are predicted to continue to be sluggish this month.

    In the fourth quarter, when most of seafood processing workers will have been vaccinated against Covid-19, seafood export can recover slightly, reaching turnovers of $8.5-8.6 billion, the VASEP forecast.

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  • India’s online retailer Cars24 enters Australia

    India’s online retailer Cars24 enters Australia

    A $1 billion online car seller has just launched in Australia, with the retailer confident the US and UK trend of buying a car online will take off across the country.

    Indian start-up CARS24 now allows Australians to buy used cars from home in under five minutes, with the car then delivered to their door.

    CARS24 Australia CEO Olga Rudenko said she believed Australians would jump on the “new way of buying used cars” very quickly.

    “Being able to order a car in under five minutes with all the financing taken care of and the ability to return within seven days at no cost is an absolute no-brainer,” she said.

    “We buy everything online these days. Groceries, clothes, appliances. Why? It’s super easy – buy when it’s right for you, no need to leave home. You trust that you’ll have a good experience, with customer reviews and return policies if things don’t work out.”

    CARS24 owns every car it sells and works to ensure quality control from sourcing through to delivery and warranty.

    The retailer also offers seven-day returns with 100 percent money-back guarantee while each car also comes with a six-month unlimited warranty and free at-home delivery – making it as easy and convenient as any other online purchase.

    Melbourne’s 20-year-old Nathaniel Chanter was one of the first Australians to use the service, buying a $23,000 Jeep he’d never seen before.

    Mr Chanter said he was “a little bit nervous” buying the car when he realized he couldn’t even look at the car first, but loved his purchase and thought he’d got it for a very good price.

    “I’d definitely do it again,” he said.

    Publisher of Drive.com.au James Ward said he thought times were changing when it came to buying cars.

    “It’s a funny thing. The old adage of going to the dealer on a Saturday morning and taking it for a run around the block… I think those days have changed,” he said.

    Mr Ward said while every buyer should do their own research, he thought test-driving was becoming less important.

    “It’s very hard to produce a bad car these days. So you’re basically buying a solid prospect, regardless of test driving or not.”

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  • Dragon fruit suffers pandemic troubles

    Dragon fruit suffers pandemic troubles

    The Covid-19 pandemic has made it difficult for Vietnamese dragon fruits, in season now, to be exported.

    China, which accounts for some 80 percent of Vietnam’s total dragon fruit exports, has restricted the flow of goods at some border gates as part of its pandemic safety precautions.

    Meanwhile, for markets like the European Union, the U.S. and some Asian countries, the pandemic has caused an increase in logistics cost, and traders are facing fiercer competition from Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia.

    To expand markets for its dragon fruit, Vietnam is seeking ways to penetrate new markets, including Australia and Japan.

    Ta Duc Minh, the commercial counselor at the Vietnamese embassy in Japan, said Vietnamese farmers and firms should ensure synchronous cycles from cultivation, harvest and preservation to transport and export to maintain the freshness and taste of dragon fruits.

    They should also intensify the application of advanced post-harvest technology to ensure product quality, he said.

    Phu proposed the central province of Binh Thuan and the southern province of Long An, the two country’s largest dragon fruit producers, should speed up processing and export of dried fruit as well as other products made from dragon fruits like wine and syrup.

    Binh Thuan has 33,750 hectares of dragon fruits with an average annual output of 650,000 tons. It currently has 240 dragon fruit collecting, semi-processing and packaging facilities, and six processing facilities that make different products with the fruit.

    According to the Long An Department of Industry and Trade, the province produces some 330,000 tons of dragon fruit each year.

  • Shrimp processing giant posts large revenue increase

    Shrimp processing giant posts large revenue increase

    Minh Phu Seafood, one of the country’s biggest shrimp processors, reported a 9 percent rise in revenues to over VND6.1 trillion ($269 million) in the first half of the year.

    The HCMC company said however the pandemic is causing disruption in sales, especially in North America, its biggest market.

    Its net profit rose nearly 20 percent to VND276 billion.

    It received a VND336-billion import tariff refund after the U.S. in February withdrew an accusation that one of its subsidiaries, Mseafood, had violated anti-dumping regulations.

    The company had to deposit the sum while it disputed the case.

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  • SeABank offers shares below half the market price

    SeABank offers shares below half the market price

    Private lender SeABank is offering 136 million shares to existing shareholders at the price of VND15,000 (over $0.6), lower than market value in late August by 58 percent.

    New share transactions are expected to take place in the last two quarters of this year, lifting SeABank’s chartered capital to VND14.784 trillion.

    Foreign shareholders also have the right to buy more shares, though their total rate of share ownership in SeABank remains capped at 5 percent.

    SeABank plans to raise VND2.040 trillion through this share issuance, of which VND1.540 trillion would be lent to corporate and individual clients and replace capital mobilized from other sources. The rest would be invested in government and credit institution bonds.

    By the end of June, SeABank assets stood at over VND186.930 trillion, while its bad debt ratio dropped to 1.76 percent. It made before-tax profits of nearly VND1.560 trillion in the first half of this year, compared with VND1.729 trillion in the whole of last year.

  • Another Vietnamese noodles product recalled in Europe

    Another Vietnamese noodles product recalled in Europe

    An instant noodles product of Thien Huong has been recalled in Norway due to the presence of a banned substance, the second such incident in Europe this month.

    The “dried noodles with chicken – and beef spices” of Ho Chi Minh City-based Thien Huong has been found to contain ethylene oxide, which is banned from food products in the country.

    Vietnamese authorities have ordered Thien Huong to provide relevant samples to examine the claim.

    A spokesperson for Thien Huong said Monday the recalled product is sold exclusively in Norway and not in Vietnam.

    It has been sold for four months in “small” volume, the spokesperson said, adding there is no ethylene oxide in any part of the production.

    Thien Huong exports to the E.U., the U.S., Africa, Japan and South Korea.

    On Aug. 20, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) announced batches of Hao Hao and Good branded noodles were being recalled after they were also found to contain ethylene oxide.

    Kajiwara Junichi, general director of Acecook Vietnam that produced the products, said the firm has abided by all the rules in Vietnam and in all the countries that it exports noodles to.

    The firm has contacted its suppliers who have asserted they do not use ethylene oxide during production, he said, stressing Acecook Vietnam does not allow the use of ethylene oxide in any production process.

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  • Vietcombank gets new chairman

    Vietcombank gets new chairman

    Vietnam’s biggest state-owned lender, Vietcombank, has named Pham Quang Dung as its new chairman until 2023.

    Dung, 48, has been its CEO and a member of the board since 2014.

    Nguyen Thanh Tung, deputy director, temporarily takes over as CEO until a new person is appointed.

    Dung has 27 years’ experience in the financial and banking industry.

    He joined Vietcombank in 1994, and has served in various positions including deputy director of a financial division in Hong Kong and deputy director of the bank.

    The previous chairman of the bank, Nghiem Xuan Thanh, was appointed the Secretary of the Party Committee of Hau Giang Province in early July.

    Vietcombank is 74.8 percent owned by the government, 15 percent by Japan’s Mizuho Corporate Bank and the rest by other shareholders.

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  • Covid impact sees Vietnam retail sales drop

    Covid impact sees Vietnam retail sales drop

    Vietnam retail sales plunged 33.7 percent year-on-year in August as the country faced stricter restrictions due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

    According to the General Statistics Office, August’s retail sales plunged 10.5 percent compared to July. In the first eight months of this year, revenue from retail trade and service declined 4.7 percent year on year, reaching US$133.43 billion.

    The Covid-19 situation in the country has seen varying degrees of lockdown in Vietnam’s major cities including Hanoi and HCMC since June.

    In HCMC, retail revenue is estimated to reach US$1.5 billion, falling 15.9 percent month on month. The e-commerce sector, which had been expected to flourish as demand soared, recorded negative growth due to the restriction of delivery services under the Prime Minister’s Directive No.16.

    Restaurants – including online ordering with delivery or pickup – have been banned from trading for nearly two months in Ho Chi Minh City.

  • Vietnam stops selling domestic flight tickets

    Vietnam stops selling domestic flight tickets

    The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) on Monday requested airlines to stop selling tickets for domestic flights until further notice.

    Airlines would need to refund tickets for customers who’ve already purchased theirs from July 21, the CAAV added.

    The number of flights from cities and localities under Covid-19 social distancing orders as dictated by Directive 16 would be limited as well, it said.

    Since July, the CAAV has requested airlines to limit the number of flights from socially distancing localities to Hanoi amid concerning coronavirus threats. The Hanoi-HCMC flight route, an important one, has been limited to two flights a day at maximum.

    Domestic flight passengers must present effective negative coronavirus test papers.

    Vietnam closed its borders and canceled all international flights in March last year, and has since allowed only certain categories of visitors with strict Covid-19 quarantine requirements.

    The country has recorded 445,292 local Covid-19 cases since the fourth coronavirus wave hit Vietnam in late April.

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  • Ireland recalls Vietnam’s Hao Hao noodles over food safety concerns

    Ireland recalls Vietnam’s Hao Hao noodles over food safety concerns

    The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has recalled some batches of Acecook Vietnam’s Hao Hao and ‘Good’ branded noodles for containing banned substances.

    On Aug. 20, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) announced that batches of Hao Hao and Good noodles are being recalled owing to the presence of ethylene oxide – an illegal pesticide.

    Ethylene oxide is not authorized for use in foods in the European Union (EU), of which Ireland is a member.

    There are three products in the FSAI’s recall list, two of which are from Acecook Vietnam, a shipment of Hao Hao spicy and sour shrimp noodles with an expiry date of Sept. 24, 2022 and Good noodles with an expiration date until Nov. 10, 2022.

    Besides, China’s Yato seafood noodles, with an expiration date of Nov. 30, 2022, were also revoked by Ireland.

    According to the FSAI, the consumption of products contaminated with ethylene oxide does not pose an acute hazard to the user, but could lead to other long-term health problems. Therefore, the agency recommends minimizing exposure to this substance.

    The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) on Saturday morning said it had sent a request to Acecook Vietnam JSC to promptly report on its production processes and procedures, and explain the difference between products consumed domestically and those exported.

    In addition, the MoIT is also reviewing the entire list of products distributed by Acecook Vietnam countrywide, checking and clarifying production processes and identifying violations.

    An Acecook representative said: “We are conducting a meeting and will have an official announcement for consumers soon.”

    Vietnam presently has approximately 50 companies producing instant noodles, including both domestic and foreign. Currently, instant pho and instant noodles made in Vietnam are present in more than 40 markets.

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