Gasoline prices rose slightly on Monday after falling to their lowest in 2 months on March 21.
RON95 went up 0.39% to VND23,120 ($0.98) per liter.
E5 RON92 increased by 0.28% to VND22,080.
Diesel stopped its downward trend with a 0.67% rise to VND19,430.
Globally, the average price of fuel products increased by 0.6-2.4%.
Per-barrel price of RON 92 was up by 1.7% to $93.82, while that of RON 95 went up 1.8% to $98.29.
Diesel cost rose 0.6% to $96.89 per barrel.
Seedcom, which owns The Coffee House and fashion store chain June, has reported a 14.5% increase in losses to VND270 billion ($11.5 million) last year.
However, revenues rose by 60% thanks to increasing contributions by its fashion and supermarket chains, according to its consolidated financial results.
Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, it has made losses for three straight years.
Seedcom chairman Nguyen Hoanh Tien said that last year’s losses were inevitable because the company expanded its retail networks.
“High-interest rates, rising rents, and increased costs of raw materials and logistics strongly affected the profit margin of the retail industry.”
Last year Seedcom’s liabilities decreased by 16% to VND1.2 trillion. This year it redeemed bonds worth nearly VND250 billion.
It owns delivery companies AhaMove and Giao Hang Nhanh, fashion brands WeStyle, Juno and Hnoss, online retail platform Haravan, and restaurant management solutions provider iPOS.
Vietnam’s rice export value rose 30.2% in the first quarter despite export volume falling 19.2%.
According to a Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development report, the country shipped 1.79 million tons of rice worth $952 million abroad in the period.
The average export price reached $531 a ton, up 9.2% over the same period in 2022. The hike is mainly because shipments to China are recovering, and Indonesia is also buying more to build up national reserves.
At a conference on rice exports at the end of February, Nguyen Ngoc Nam, Chairman of the Vietnam Food Association (VFA), predicted that rice prices will remain high in the second quarter.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), many countries are at risk of drought in the second half of the year, so food production may decline. As a result, they are increasing the purchase of rice to ensure food security.
This is an opportunity for Vietnamese rice exports to benefit, said experts.
Vietnamese cell phone users have been receiving a spate of sexual messages from strangers in recent times that also ask them to click on links.
The messages that came from handles such as “Lam tinh” (Making love), “Gai goi” (Call girl) and “Tim ban tinh” (Seeking love partners) began at the end of February, and have increased since last week.
Phuong Thanh in Hanoi’s Cau Giay District said she received text messages from obscene sender names twice last week.
When she was dining out with friends once the entire group received a message from the same sender with identical content telling to access a link for details.
Thanh Lam in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 said he has received similar messages in the last few days. When he clicked on the link that came with the message, he was redirected to a website that introduced a dating app and told users to download it.
“I knew it was a scam, so I didn’t go ahead. However, it will be very dangerous if the bad guys use aliases to impersonate organizations such as network carriers, banks and e-wallets,” he said. “Then gullible people are very likely to be deceived.”
Many phone users received messages with obscene content.
The difference with the old scam is that the obscene messages do not display a phone number, only a preset sender name.
In telecommunications, it is known as an “alias,” and is used only in brand-name messages registered by companies and owners of product brands.
Computer security expert Ngo Minh Hieu, aka HieuPC, the founder of a non-profit named “Chong lua dao” (Anti-phishing), said scammers change scripts constantly.
“When phone users are wary of messages impersonating banks, scammers turn to scenarios that target curiosity.”
The applications that are sent for downloading are mainly spyware capable of collecting user information, he said.
Experts advise phone users not to click on unknown links, carefully check a website before downloading apps or entering passwords and set up OTP (one-time password) security for accounts and install security software on their computers and mobile phones.
According to the Vietnam Trade Office in Belgium, the European Union (EU) is considering a proposal to reduce food safety control measures on instant noodles imported from Vietnam.
Since February last year, 20% of Vietnamese instant noodle shipments exported to the EU have been subject ethylene oxide level inspections. All shipments have been required to come with health certificates issued by Vietnamese regulatory agencies.
According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade, in the second half of 2022, the EU found no ethylene oxide, an organic compound with various applications (including disinfection and sterilization), in Vietnamese instant noodles.
Therefore, the EU has proposed not requiring health certificates for instant noodles imported from Vietnam, reported the office.
According to the office, the proposal is expected to be approved by the block’s member states at a meeting in April.
By the end of February, the Ministry of Industry and Trade had issued 3,170 health certificates to exporters of instant noodles to the EU market through 21 ports.
In August 2021, a number of batches of Vietnamese instant noodles exported to the EU market were returned or destroyed due to residues of ethylene oxide exceeding the permissible level stipulated by the EU.
Currently, each country and region has different regulations on ethylene oxide.
Ethylene oxide is commonly used as a highly effective disinfectant and fumigation agent in a number of agricultural products, especially spices and herbs.
Consumption of products containing ethylene oxide does not pose an acute health hazard but can cause cancer if taken regularly for a long time.
In many European countries, 2-chloroethanol, a metabolite of ethylene oxide, is considered ethylene oxide when they calculate the ethylene oxide content in foods.
Vietnam’s consternating visa policies helped placed the nation in the bottom 10 of an index ranking countries in terms of how favorable expatriates find their living conditions.
The Expat Essentials Index, informed by the annual Expat Insider survey by website InterNations (which describes itself as the world’s largest online community of expats), found expatriates vexed about the Vietnam’s visa policy.
For the 2022 edition of the index, InterNations asked 11,970 expats of 177 nationalities living in 181 countries and territories to provide information on various aspects of expat life.
To be featured in the Expat Essentials Index, each destination needed a sample size of at least 50 survey participants. In total, 52 countries and territories met this requirement.
Vietnam landed in the bottom 10, ranking 46th in the overall index, which included the four subcategories of Digital Life, Admin Topics, Housing, and Language.
The nation was placed 51st out of 52 destinations for the Admin Topics Subcategory.
Within this subcategory, 48% of surveyed expats reported that they had difficulties obtaining a visa to move to Vietnam, double the global average of 24%.
Almost two in three, or 66%, said it was challenging to deal with the local bureaucracy, compared to 39% globally. And 41% found it difficult to open a local bank account, compared to 21% globally.
“The bureaucracy makes simple tasks quite difficult,” said a British expat living in Vietnam, according to the survey.
Vietnam ranked last for the availability of government services online in the Digital Life Subcategory, where it placed 49th. About one in four expats (23%) described it as difficult to pay without cash in Vietnam, compared to 8% globally.
The country also fell in the bottom 10 of the Language Subcategory, ranking 47th.
Within this subcategory, Vietnam ranked last for the ease of learning the local language.
However, 65% of respondents reported that it is easy to live in Vietnam without speaking the local language, compared to 51% globally.
For more positives, the country excelled in the Housing Subcategory, where it ranked fifth. Nearly seven in 10 expats (69%) considered housing in Vietnam affordable (compared to 39% globally), and 76% reported that it is easy to find a house here (versus 54% globally).
The survey found Bahrain the world’s best destination for expats and Germany the worst. Singapore came third in the list as expats highly rated its digitalized life and Indonesia sixth thanks to affordable housing, with both having the language advantage.
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has ranked two Vietnamese universities as among the world’s top 100 in their subject areas.
In Hospitality and Leisure Management, Duy Tan University in Da Nang was ranked 51 out of 100 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023.
In the Engineering Petroleum program, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh CITY (VNU-HCMC) in the eponymous city also placed 51 out of 100, according to the rankings announced on Wednesday.
VNU-HCMC’s Engineering-Petroleum program held the same rank last year, while this is Duy Tan University’s Hospitality and Leisure Management program’s first time on the list.
Vietnam is also home to two other universities that ranked within the top 300 in certain subject areas.
Duy Tan University also made it to 201 out of 230 in the Engineering-Civil and Structural Engineering subject, while Ton Duc Thang University in HCMC made it to 251 out of 300 in Mathematics.
Vietnamese universities made the rankings in three other subjects. In Engineering and Technology, Duy Tan University was ranked 326, Hanoi University of Science and Technology and VNU-HCM both at rank 401 out of 450, and the Vietnam National University in Hanoi at rank 451 out of 500. In Natural Sciences, Duy Tan University and Vietnam National University in Hanoi were both at rank 451 out of 500. In Social Sciences and Management, Duy Tan University was at rank 451 out of 500 and VNU-HCM at rank 501 out of 530.
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) is a British firm specializing in overseas education. This year’s ranking includes around 1,600 global universities in 54 subjects, based on criteria like academic reputation, citations per paper and international research networks.
The Ministry of Information and Communications said it will deploy solutions to block the payment for unauthorized games in the country.
There are hundreds of thousands of unauthorized games, card games, and gambling games which cause insecurity and disorder as well as bad consequences for the society, the ministry’s Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information said at a meeting on Thursday.
The unauthorized games, mainly released on the App Store, Google Play, and online gaming platform Valse Stream, are estimated to generate an annual revenue of nearly VND5 trillion ($211.86 million), accounting for 30% of the total revenue of the game industry in Vietnam.
The ministry is requiring organizations and businesses that provide intermediary payment services not to allow payment for unauthorized games through their systems.
In the case of payments via IAP (in-app purchases), they should ask Apple and Google to provide sufficient information about the transaction to block the payment.
Every month, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information will update the list of licensed and unlicensed games for payment intermediaries.
The ministry also said it will require Google and Apple not to cooperate with intermediaries to pay for unauthorized games on their app stores.
According to Le Quang Tu Do, the authority’s director, many games are being released across borders through the App Store and Play Store, while a number of Vietnamese e-wallets have been deployed on the two stores, making it easy for users to pay through intermediaries.
The Ministry of Information and Communications has so far licensed some 200 game companies, but the number of licensed businesses that are actually providing games to the market is less than 30.
The Ministry of Transport will increase the domestic air ticket price ceiling in Vietnam by an average of 3.75% later this year, a decision to delight local carriers.
The maximum airfare on four out of five flight distances will rise in the second or third quarter, according to a recent Ministry of Finance price report.
The biggest increase will be 6.67% (to VND4 million or $170) for one-way tickets on flights of 1,280 kilometers (Hanoi to Phu Quoc Island) and longer.
Flights between 1,000 and 1,280 kilometers will see their ticket cap price rise 6.25% to VND3.4 million.
Flights of smaller distances will see their maximum price rise by between 2.27% and 3.58%.
Flights under 500 kilometers will see no ceiling change. Their prices will remain at a maximum of VND1.7 million per one-way ticket.
The cap price increase will likely increase Vietnam’s 2023 Consumer Price Index by 0.07% points.
Earlier this year, Vietnam Airlines and Bamboo Airways proposed increasing the cap ticket price to take into account rising in costs.
The airfare price cap was last increased in 2015.
By November last year, fuel costs had surged more than 80% from September 2015, which raised airlines’ total expenses by 33.5%, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).
Bamboo Airways CEO Nguyen Manh Quan has argued that the price cap be applied only to air routes operated by a single carrier.
For routes with two carriers or more, the cap should be removed so the “market can adjust by itself,” he said.
Some analysts have said that the price cap is unreasonable and could slow the growth of domestic aviation.
In 2021, the CAAV proposed that air routes with three carriers or more have no price cap to allow for more healthy competition in services.
Ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the long-term deposit and issuer ratings of private lender Techcombank because of its high exposure to the struggling property sector.
Its currency deposit and issuer ratings were lowered from Ba2 to Ba3, the same level as several other banks in Vietnam.
Its outlook is down from stable to negative.
“The downgrade of Techcombank’s ratings and assessments reflects Moody’s expectations that the stress faced by Vietnam’s real estate sector will negatively impact the bank’s standalone credit strength, given its high exposure to the sector,” the ratings agency said in a release.
It claimed that the downgrade is unrelated to recent U.S. bank failures and events at Credit Suisse Group AG.
As of the end of December loans to the property and construction sectors represented 29% of Techcombank’s gross loans.
The bank also had exposure to the sectors in the form of corporate bonds, which made up 6% of its total assets.
Some of its exposure to the property sector were of significant size relative to its tangible common equity and could bring volatility to its profitability and capital should they become problem assets.
Defaults by real estate companies in Vietnam have increased since 2022 because of tighter regulations for bond issuances alongside arrests of high-profile real estate business owners and executives amid the government’s anti-graft crackdown.
Property sales have also weakened because rising interest rates have hit affordability.
These factors have weakened the debt repayment capacity of property developers, particularly highly leveraged ones with a sizable amount of bonds maturing in 2023 and 2024.
Techcombank’s asset quality could therefore deteriorate given its exposure to the sector.
Its funding and liquidity are adequate given the current environment but are vulnerable to confidence shocks like at other Vietnamese banks.
The negative outlook reflects uncertainties around how the real estate sector in Vietnam will perform and, in turn, the risk of a further strain in the bank’s standalone credit strength if stress in the real estate sector persists.
Moody’s could change the outlook to stable if the stress abates or the bank maintains its problem asset ratio, including its restructured assets, at less than 2% over the next 12–18 months while gradually reducing concentration to the real estate sector.
A bank spokesperson said Moody’s decision reflects the challenges the banking industry faces.
But Techcombank’s core strengths would allow it to remain outstanding, especially in terms of the strength of its capital base, liquidity position and earnings-to-operating income ratio, the spokesperson added.
An earlier Moody’s report said many lenders in Vietnam had high exposure to the property and construction sector as of 2021, the top five being Viet Capital, Nam A Bank, SHB, Techcombank, and BIDV.
Vietnam’s major manufacturers have raised steel prices to a 7-month high despite plunging demand.
On Tuesday, Hoa Phat Group hiked its prices for rebar steel by 0.95% to VND15.99 million ($678.55) per ton.
Local steelmakers Viet Y, Viet Duc, Kyoei and Viet My all made similar adjustments, while Pomina’s price tag towered above at VND17.6 million, 10% higher than market average.
Manufacturers said that steel prices, which are now at their highest point since August, have been rising since October last year due to an input materials shortage prompted by declining billet production.
Steel billets are raw steel bars not yet processed for the market, and billet makers reduced production due to low prices in earlier months.
Steel demand will likely remain meager in upcoming months.
Steel products sales in the first two months of 2023 plunged 23% year-on-year to 3.8 million tons, while exports dropped 10% to 1 million tons.
Analysts at brokerage Mirae Asset Vietnam said that the steel market is largely dependent on the property sector, and the real estate market cool down this year has thus adversely affected the steel industry.
Steel production is therefore expected to drop 10.5% from last year to under $17.9 million tons this year.
However, manufacturers hope that public spending, which is set to hit an historic high of VND704 trillion this year, will help boost demand as the government aims to disburse at least 95% of that figure.
Citibank has been honored as “Bank of the Year” in the Asia Pacific at the 2022 International Financing Review Asia Awards.
The award was based on a unanimous decision by the editors of IFR Asia, a leading regional capital markets magazine.
The recognition from IFR Asia reaffirms the expertise and solution-driven approach of Citi’s capital markets and advisory teams in developing and executing complex transactions for clients in an ever-changing and challenging macro-environment.
“Citi’s pan- Asian footprint and diverse sector coverage made it a bastion of stability, while its commercial bank enabled it to give issuers more options in rapidly changing market conditions,” IFR Asia concluded in an editorial write up accompanying the award win.
“This win is a recognition of the strength of Citi’s franchise, the competitive advantage of our global network and the passion and energy of our teams,” Jan Metzger, head of Asia Pacific banking, capital markets and advisory at Citi, said.
In Vietnam, the bank recently won the 2023 Golden Dragon Award for its role as an outstanding foreign enterprise promoting green investment, digital transformation and sustainable development.
Ramachandran A.S., Vietnam Citi Country Officer, said: “We have been financing and facilitating a wide array of climate solutions, from renewable energy and clean technology to carbon credits, to help accelerate the country’s transition to a low-carbon economy.
“Our strategy in Vietnam is to continue doing what we do best: corporate and institutional banking for large companies and financial institutions with cross – border needs, and simultaneously supporting Vietnam’s ambitions to build a more sustainable future.”
SJC gold price dropped 0.22% to VND67.15 million ($2,855.14) per tael Wednesday morning.
Gold ring price fell 0.53% to VND55.5 million per tael. A tael equals 37.5 grams or 1.2 ounces.
Globally gold prices edged higher on Wednesday as the dollar eased, while investors kept a close watch on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision and policy outlook, Reuters reported.
Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,942.96 per ounce.
Gold is traditionally considered a hedge against inflation, but higher rates increase the opportunity cost of holding the non-yielding asset.
The dollar index was down slightly, making bullion less expensive for buyers holding other currencies.
Markets will also take stock of the February UK inflation data, also due on Wednesday ahead of the Bank of England’s monetary policy decision on Thursday.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told bankers on Tuesday that she is prepared to protect depositors in smaller U.S. banks suffering deposit runs that threaten more contagion amid the worst financial system turmoil in over a decade.
Finding new and niche markets is how factories cope with the fall in export orders.
After seeing orders from Europe plunge by 70% in recent weeks, shoemaker Chang Shuen in the southern province of Binh Duong quickly turned to the U.S., a market it has yet to pay attention to for nearly a decade.
According to Doan Sy Loi, its CEO, the prices of products made for the U.S. market are always at least 15% lower than for the European market.
When exporting to Europe, Chang Shuen only needs to make 5,000 pairs of shoes a day to turn a profit, but needs 6,000-6,500 pairs in the case of the U.S., he said.
“During difficult times I have to do more to make a profit.” However, one advantage is that orders from the U.S. are five to 10 times larger than from Europe, he said.
He added that the larger volumes attune workers, making production smooth and speedy. Garment company Dony in Ho Chi Minh City recently sent executives to the Middle East to meet and negotiate with wholesalers for big brands, its director, Pham Quang Anh, said.
If the price is good, importers are willing to order in bulk and take delivery over one or two years, he said. “I offered a lower price than before. They immediately agreed to increase the order quantity by 300%.”
With the extended delivery time, the factory could better manage its production schedules, he said.
Often it had to buy raw materials at short notice and thus high prices, he said. Workers had to work overtime, increasing labor costs, or the factory had to hire causal labor with poor skills, often resulting in faulty goods.
Pham Xuan Hong, president of the HCMC Association of Garment-Textile-Embroidery-Knitting, said many businesses are also looking for niche markets and new partners.
They are developing green products from recycled materials, and targeting high-end segments and customers.
He expects orders to recover by 90% by the end of the third quarter.
Bamboo Airways has found a buyer who is also willing to help disgraced former chairman Trinh Van Quyet deal with the financial consequences of his alledged crime.
A spokesperson said Thursday that the identity of the investor would be revealed later.
The buyer has agreed to take over the airline’s entire debts and provide Quyet with the money he might have to pay as fines and indemnification for the stock manipulation which led to his arrest last year.
Property developer FLC held a 51.24% stake in Bamboo Airways, and Quyet personally owned 40.03%. His 30.3% stake in FLC took his total ownership of the airline to 55.5%.
Bamboo Airways said the sale of shares has been approved and supervised by authorities.
The carrier now flies to 21 out of 22 airports in Vietnam and in April will add Ca Mau to its destinations.
Internationally, it has been resuming services to Europe and Australia post-Covid.