Vietnam Business and Financial News

Vietnam Financial News Network

BUSINESS IN BRIEF 30/10 2009-10-30 - VietNamNet/VNA, TN

Samsung opens $700 mln cellphone plant in Bac Ninh

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics opened a US$700-million plant in Vietnam on Wednesday to make mobile handsets for both the local market and for export.

The plant, located at Yen Phong Industrial Park in the northern province of Bac Ninh, is the first cellphone plant in Vietnam and the seventh of Samsung in the world.

The plant can make 1.5 million phones a month now and its annual output is projected to rise to 100 million in 2012. The plant has around 2,000 workers now and can increase this number five times by 2012.

Speaking at the opening ceremony Wednesday, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the government would provide favorable conditions for the plant to develop as planned.

Samsung, the world’s second largest mobile phone maker, has stared exporting products from the new plant to Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern and African markets. It plans to export them to Australia and Europe later.

Vietnam fourth most confident country

Vietnam is the fourth most confident country in the world-up five places since March this year, the Nielsen Company’s global consumer confidence survey showed.

Consumer confidence in Vietnam had increased for the first time after declining for six consecutive surveys since March, 2007.

Its confidence index jumped 24 points from 85 in April this year to 109 this month, in contrast to the world average which jumped 9 points over the same period to stand at 86.

Hong Kong was in the lead, up 14 points in the third quarter from 79 to 93 index points, followed by the Republic of Korea (+13 points) and Brazil (+12 points).

Only 69 percent of Vietnamese surveyed said their nation was in a recession compared to 76 percent in April. Fifty-five percent said yes, the country would be out of the recession within the next 12 months, 22 percent said no and 23 percent did not know.

Complementing the jump in confidence, 54 percent of Vietnamese believed job prospects would be good to excellent over the next 12 months. Sixty-six percent also believed the state of their personal finances was good to excellent.

However, despite a relatively positive outlook on jobs and finances, 46 percent stated the timing was “not so good” to buy the things they wanted and needed.

WB helps develop agriculture in Central Highlands

The World Bank is expected to grant nearly 8.53 million USD to help ethnic minority people in the Central Highlands province of Dac Lac to develop agriculture in a sustainable manner.

The project will support and enhance the planting of coffee bushes and avocado trees and the breeding of wild boar, as well as promote the trading of products made from them.

It will also help to create an association that will liaise between both farmers and local businesses who hope to raise profits and boost sustainable agricultural development by meeting the local demand for these types of products.

The union project will be carried out across 370 family households in the region from now to 2013. It will provide farmers with training courses on intensive cultivation technologies that conform to the world-wide coffee certification programme “UTZ Certified”.

It will also help farmers to build pigsties, provide them with breeding stock, increase their capacity to manage their financial affairs and promote their products before their products are traded on local markets.

Local people will also get assistance to grow avocado trees with the DAKADO trademark.

Korea life opens second Vietnam office

Korea Life Insurance Co Ltd has opened its second office in Hanoi.

Since the company began Vietnam operations in April, Korea Life has contracted with more than 5,000 customers with annual premium income of more than 28 billion VND (1.5 million USD).

It expected 2009 premiums to total 40 billion VND (2.1 million USD).

In addition to its offices in HCM City and Hanoi , the company was also preparing to open a branch office in the city of Buon Ma Thuot in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province of Dac Lak.

Electronic, IT exports may hit 3 billion USD

The Vietnam’s electronic and information technology export turnover this year may reach 3 billion USD, according to Tran Quang Hung, General Secretary of the Vietnam Electronic Industries Association (VEIA).

Like previous years, more than 90 percent of the total export turnover is forecasted to come from companies with foreign-invested capital.

Vietnamese electronic enterprises are generally small- and medium-sized. Due to a lack of capital and out-dated technology the imbalance in export turnover between domestic and FDI companies is unlikely to be resolved in the near future, Hung said.

According to Hung, the recent biggest challenge that the industry is facing is a dependence on multi-national companies.

In 2007, the Government approved a master plan to develop Vietnamese electronics industry up to 2020. However, the problem was how to implement the strategy, he said.

To solve the problem, Hung suggested that support industries be developed and research and development into new products using existing spare parts be carried out.

“Capital is a big problem. For example, it costs about 500 million USD to invest in a production line to produce LCD screen. So, I think, the best way is to develop a support industry,” he said.

This year, the electronics industry faced many difficulties due to the world economic recession.

Up to the end of March, the industry lost 30 percent of export orders. In the first four months of this year, export turnover dropped by 8 percent over the corresponding period last year.

However, signs of recovery came in May. Export turnover in the first eight months of the year increased to 1.6 billion USD.

Up to the end of this year, the domestic electronics industry will see between 10 percent and 15 percent growth thanks to the Government stimulus packages.