Japanese retailer MUJI to set foot in Vietnam

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After the landfall of AEON, Takashimaya, 7-Eleven, and FujiMart, Vietnam’s retail market will welcome a new Japanese player called MUJI from Japan, which promises to heat up the race in this high-potential sector.

Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. (the parent company of MUJI) announced that the board of directors has resolved the establishment of a subsidiary, MUJI Vietnam LLC, in Vietnam for further business development.

Among all the fast-developing ASEAN countries, Vietnam has the third-largest population and is undergoing rapid economic development. MUJI sees Vietnam as one of the major markets in the ASEAN, with an estimated real GDP growth of 7.1 per cent in 2018. RKJ has therefore decided to establish a new company in Vietnam.

Many Japanese brands are present in the Vietnamese retail market, such as AEON, Takashimaya, 7-Eleven, and now Sumitomo with FujiMart.

AEON was the first to enter the country. Recently, this retailer had to abandon the Fivimart supermarket chain to Vietnamese retailer Vingroup and also broke up with Trung Nguyen with whom they jointly bought the franchising rights to Ministop. However, in the commercial centre segment, AEON Mall has turned a profit only after three years of operation, while many competitors are still suffering heavy losses.

AEON Group has four shopping malls in Hanoi, Binh Duong, and Ho Chi Minh City and it is regarded as a major competitor on the Vietnamese retail scene. It plans to build a new mall in Hanoi and another in Haiphong in the short run, and to have 20 malls across the country by 2020.

Meanwhile, AEON Group has been in partnership with Japan’s Sojitz Corporation to develop Ministop convenience stores. The two firms aim to raise the number of their joint outlets to 800 in the next eight years.

Japanese retailer Takashimaya decided to conquer the Vietnamese market by setting up its first shopping mall in Ho Chi Minh City with the capital of over $25 million. The firm is planning to increase sales by expanding daily family services and expects to turn a profit by 2022.

In July 2017, the first 7-Eleven store was launched in Ho Chi Minh City via Seven System Vietnam (SSV) as the Master Franchisee of the 7-Eleven convenience store system in Vietnam, making Vietnam the 19th country to host the world’s largest convenience store chain.

7-Eleven does not expand through the franchise form, but will open and operate stores by itself. It aims to open 100 stores within three years and 1,000 stores in the next 10 years.

Source: VIR

Vietnam’s coffee king, queen should divorce: prosecutors

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HCMC prosecutors proposed Monday that Vietnam’s coffee king and his estranged wife get divorced, sharing the spoils of shared properties.
Dang Le Nguyen Vu, founder and chairman of Trung Nguyen Group, and his estranged wife Le Hoang Diep Thao, should divide their 13 shared properties equally, the procuracy said.

The total value of the properties is estimated at VND725 billion ($31.30 million).

The procuracy also said that the couple’s four children should be raised by Thao, with Vu responsible for providing VND10 billion ($431,450) towards their upkeep each year, starting from 2013 until they finish their tertiary education. 2013 is the year that conflicts broke out between the couple.

Since Vu and Thao have not agreed on how to divide the VND2.1 trillion ($90.6 million) kept in banks, the procuracy proposed that this item be suspended until the next session.

For Trung Nguyen shares, if the couple cannot come to an agreement, the shares should be divided equally but “the contribution of the husband and the wife in creating, maintaining and developing the asset must be considered,” the procuracy said.

Vu had previously said he the company’s shares held jointly with his wife also divided 70:30 in his favor, but Thao insisted on a 50:50 split because of her contributions to the company.

Thao said she’d given Vu the money to start the company in 1996, but she could produce no proof, hence the procuracy could not conclude that she’d contributed financially to the company.

However, it did say that Thao participated in managing the company.

The court will announce its verdict on March 1.

Last December, Thao had accused Trung Nguyen Group of forging signatures to remove her from the Trung Nguyen Instant Coffee Corporation (Trung Nguyen IC) and replace her with her husband.

In 2006 she had been appointed Trung Nguyen’s deputy general director, and she claims that under her management its charter capital had increased from VND150 billion ($6.5 million) to VND2.5 trillion ($108.7 million) and both its revenues and profits had grown tremendously.

Then, she has alleged, in July 2014, Vu dismissed her without the board of directors’ approval. He also instructed his employees to demolish her office and block her from entering the company’s headquarters, she claimed.

Last September, the court reinstated her as deputy general director, co-owner and co-founder of Trung Nguyen Group, but the very next day Vu dismissed her for a second time, accusing her of threatening his partners.

Trung Nguyen Group is Vietnam’s leading coffee firm in Vietnam. It earned revenues of VND3.95 trillion ($170.5 million) and pretax profits of VND681 billion ($29.4 million) in 2017.

Source: Vnexpress

Dust particles threaten life in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City

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The increasing amount of airborne fine dust has been posing public health risks to urbanites in Vietnam’s southern and northern metropolises of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in recent times, experts have warned.

A number of Hanoi people experienced dust-related breathing difficulty and coughing when a high traffic volume was noticed last month, resulting in a concentration of tiny dust particles that was at some points double Vietnam’s maximum safety limit and exceeded the WHO ceiling by four times.

A Hanoi resident said she and her colleagues had to close all company doors and windows, filled every opening in the doors and purchased an air purifier to keep the pollution at bay.

Dust was kicked up by running vehicles and gathered in thick layers on the façade of the houses along an under-construction overpass on Pham Van Dong Street in the capital city.

The road is notorious for its poor air quality as it has always ranked first in terms of air pollution across Hanoi, according to the municipal natural resource and environment department.

The capital’s air quality had declined distinctively within the six days of late January, with a number of locations under air pollution observation categorized as ‘bad’ and ‘very bad’ – the lowest levels.

Particulate pollution is also worrisome in Ho Chi Minh City even though it is not as severe as in Hanoi.

“The two metropolises are facing dust pollution as the concentration of particulate matter is still high,” Nguyen Thi Anh Thu, a worker at Vietnamese non-profit Green Innovation and Development Center.

Particulate matter, or PM, is a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in the air, many of which are hazardous. PM is reportedly the deadliest form of air pollution due to their ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and blood streams unfiltered.

Thu attributed the high concentration of PM in Hanoi in part to the currently rising amount of road traffic and construction.

Another cause, she said, is the presence of numerous high-rise buildings and dust carried by winds from neighboring industrial factory areas and from other countries.

A point in this view was echoed by Hoang Duong Tung, director of the Vietnam Clean Air Partnership, who said Hanoi’s air quality plummeted after the number of vehicles moving there surged in January.

Playing a major role in the pollution, Tung underlined, was a phenomenon called inversion, during which warmer air stays above cooler air.

This is the reverse of the normal change pattern where air temperature decreases commensurately with a rise in altitude.

“Inversion traps pollutants close to the ground, causing their concentration to grow above cities,” he said.

He stressed airborne PM2.5, tiny dust particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, about one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair, can pass completely unobstructed to the lungs.

It can cause deadly conditions such as cancer and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, he said, adding this type of particulate matter comes from carbon dioxide, sulphur, nitrogen and metal chemical compounds.

South Korean suffered a similar particulate pollution but quickly put stringent measures in place whenever the concentration of minuscule dust reached 50 milligrams per cubic meter.

But authorities in Vietnam have been tardy in solving the problem over the past three years, when air pollution has become a real headache.

Source: Tuoitrenews

Prohibited goods on Lazada and Shopee

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Lawyers believe Lazada and Shopee could be fined for VND30-40 million ($1,300-1,740) for the loose administration of goods sold on their websites, causing serious consequences.

Over the last days, there have been complaints of guns being displayed on e-commerce websites like Lazada and Shopee. Specifically, a search for “m4a1” on Lazada.vn and Shopee.vn yields a lot of items related to guns and components of toyguns JinMing Gen8 M4A1 and JinMing Gen9 M4A1.

The search terms “mua gen8 m4a1” or “mua gen9 m4a1” on google.vn, one can find a myriad of websites displaying such items for sale.

These are plastic guns with the bullets made of plaster and are produced in China and are 1:1 replicas of M4A1 rifles. The websites explain that the bullets are soft and smooth and will cause no harm even if shot in the eye.

However, several videos show that these guns do pack quite a punch by puncturing beer cans at close distance or break a plastic case.

Items sold on Shopee and Lazada are advertised as add-on components to upgrade or as parts for these JinMIng guns. They are made from metal in other countries and are priced from a couple hundred thousand dongs to VND1.5 million ($10-65).

In fact, e-commerce platforms do not allow users to sell prohibited items and do keep a team to moderate content and add keywords to a “black list.” However, these items did not use the word “gun” in their names and descriptions, so they were allowed to be displayed on Lazada.vn and Shopee.vn for several days.

Customers are worried that a gun assembled from these parts could shoot plastic- or even metal bullets, causing damage.

A representative of Shopee told Zing.vn that the e-commerce platform has initiated an investigation and updated its black list of keywords after this incident. The e-commerce platform also issued penalties for vendors who sold these items.

Lawyer Ha Hai (Ho Chi Minh City) said that trading components of weapons could cause damage and violates regulations.

The Law on the Management and Usage of Weapons, Explosives and Combat Gears issued on June 20, 2017, stipulated that companies involved in the research, manufacturing, trading, import, export, transport, repair, and use of weapons, explosives, explosives precursors, and combat gears must obtain licenses and certificates issued by authorities,except for cold weapons used for exhibition and heirlooms.

According to lawyer Nguyen Thanh Ha, chairman of SBLAW, in case Lazada does not have measures to handle and prevent violations like this, the company will be open to penalties in line with the legal provisions on e-commerce operation.

According to Decree No.185/2013/ND-CP on penalties on administrative violations in commercial activities, the production of and trading in counterfeit or banned goods, Article 83 stipulates a fine of VND30-40 million ($1,300-1,740) for the failure of applying handling measures when detecting or receiving reports on trading acts which violate legal provision on the websites providing e-commerce services.

Earlier, Shopee.vn was investigated for selling a toy with a Chinese map violating Vietnam’s sovereignty. Shopee then had to get rid of the toy map showing the infamous nine-dash line that China has used to illegally claim sovereign Vietnamese territory in the East Sea, internationally known as the South China Sea. Moreover, these products were printed in English and Chinese language without Vietnamese translation, which violated regulations on labelling goods.

Meanwhile, Lazada receives complaints on the quality of products and services, delays in delivery, goods being different from the advertisements, delivering used/old items or the wrong articles, repudiating liability, cancelling orders, fake promotions and wrong prices, selling goods not in inventory, and abandoning customers.

In 2017, Lazada was the only e-commerce site and one of the brands along with several multi-level companies about which the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Vietnam Competition Authority (VCA) received the largest number of complaint letters.

Source: VIR

North Korea has been studying reforms of Vietnam for years

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Delegations from the reclusive nation have been visiting Vietnam over the last three years and they are “very interested” in the economic transition of the Southeast Asian country, said Le Dang Doanh, a former advisor to the Vietnamese prime minister.

They also studied how Vietnam managed to normalize political and economic ties with Washington, said Doanh, who is now senior fellow at the economic college of Hanoi National University.

According to a report on CNBC, North Korea has been closely studying market reforms in Vietnam and their impact on political stability, a former Vietnamese government advisor said on Monday.

Delegations from the reclusive nation have been visiting Vietnam over the last three years and they are “very interested” in the economic transition of the Southeast Asian country, said Le Dang Doanh, a former advisor to the Vietnamese prime minister.

The North Korean teams wanted to know how Hanoi prepared and carried out reforms, as well as the political implications that such changes brought about, Doanh told CNBC’s Chery Kang on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un are due to meet in Hanoi on Wednesday and Thursday. It will be their second summit following last June’s meeting in Singapore. The key issues on the table will be the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, as well as sanctions on Pyongyang, which have taken a toll on the North’s economy.

The North Korean delegations also studied how Vietnam managed to normalize political and economic relations with Washington, said Doanh, who is now senior fellow at the economic college of Hanoi National University.

A series of reforms undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s paved the way for communist-controlled Vietnam to re-enter the global market and become one the region’s fastest growing economies.

Even in the midst of reforms, the Southeast Asia nation has managed to retain tight control over its people and economy, and is widely touted as a potential model for Pyongyang to follow.

Vietnam’s economic transition has managed to “mobilize the whole dynamism, the creativity and deliver the determination of the Vietnamese people to come to develop,” said Doanh. “I think it is a very good experience for North Korea.”

However, he cautioned: “Reform is a difficult process — some gain or benefit, (others) will lose power.”

North Korea’s Kim has allowed some markets in his country to develop, introduced more Special Economic Zones and called for factories to expand their product ranges to cater for diverse consumer tastes.

By Huileng Tan, reported on CNBC — Reuters contributed to this report.

Trump pushes tariff deadline, most SE Asian stocks rise; Vietnam leads

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Most Southeast Asian stock markets traded higher on Monday, with Vietnam leading the pack, on hopes of a Sino-US trade deal after US President Donald Trump pushed back the planned increase in tariffs on Chinese imports from March 1.

Trump on Sunday tweeted that “substantial progress” had been made in trade talks with China over the weekend.

Trump did not set a new deadline for the talks to conclude, but told US state governors gathered at the White House that there could be “very big news over the next week or two” if all went well in the negotiations.

“This is likely to give market a relief in trade concerns, but US-China confrontation in trades and technology remains a mid-to-long term theme due to its complexity and significant impact to global economy,” Margaret Yang Yan, a market analyst at CMC Markets Singapore, wrote in a note.

“Lack of details on what so called ‘significant progress’ came in the last two rounds of talks, it is hard to convince people that the worst is over on the negotiation table,” she added.

China is the biggest trading partner of the Southeast Asian region.

The Vietnam index climbed as much as 1.1% to its highest level since Oct 9 in early trade, and was poised to extend gains for a sixth consecutive session, buoyed by financial stocks. The benchmark was trading 0.6% higher at 0417 GMT.

Moody’s Investor Services said banks in Vietnam will achieve a further improvement in profitability, owing to wider net interest spreads and lower credit costs.

The Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade Of Viet Nam, Vietnam’s largest listed bank climbed 1.3%, while Vingroup JSC, the country’s top listed firm by market value, added 0.3%.

– Reuters.

Businesses willing to spend big money on digital transformation

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The cost for applying high technologies is becoming more affordable, which gives more opportunities to businesses to speed up digitalization of their production and business.

Tran Ha Thanh, technology director of Techcom Securities (TCBS), said TCBS has decided to use Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service, after a long trial use period.

The solution will help TCBS analyze data in depth, which will provide important information to the company’s managers to make reasonable and timely decisions. It also serves TCBS’s goal of developing a technological platform to provide services to 1 million customers by 2020.

According to Thanh, a friendly easy-to-use platform and high data security level are the two most important characteristics of an app.

Azure provides better machine learning solutions while the visualization capability of Power BI can help the TCBS development team actively integrate or adjust when necessary. Meanwhile, easy-to-use solutions allow the company to receive feedback and improve services to better satisfy clients.

Not only used as a data storage platform, Azure also provides 200 services from infrastructure to virtual server platforms, from web services, application development, security, IoT, big data, to advanced analytical technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain.

Businesses have been advised to choose the hybrid cloud, the environment that combines private (enterprise) clouds and public clouds, which can take full advantage of enterprises’ existing platforms.

Nguyen Trung Cong, technology director of Thien Minh Group, which operates in the tourism & hospitality sector, said Thien Minh is applying AI and machine learning solutions to make automatic suggestions to clients using iVIVU.com, based on their use records and searching behavior.

Encouraged by initial results, Thien Minh plans to expand the AI application to the entire chain of hotels and restaurants.

“AI and machine learning need time to collect data as well as improve performance so as to provide accurate results, helping us provide the best possible personalized experience,” Cong said, adding that Thien Minh is striving to form a smart system of integrating and exchanging tourism information which can help create added value for tourism products

He went on to say that carrying out digital transformation is a must in the context of the cutthroat competition in the market, where more and more foreign firms join.

Truong Gia Binh, president of FPT, also said that the digital transformation, which is occurring all over the globe, is irreverstible.

Thanh of TCBS affirmed that it is now much easier to carry out digital transformation as the cost is getting ‘more reasonable’. Five years ago, only large corporations dared to make investments in technological solutions because of the high cost and complexity. But now, advances in data analysis make it affordable for small enterprises to access high technology.

According to a report on Vietnamnet

Hanoi all set for DPRK-USA summit

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DPRK-USA summit will be held in Hanoi on Feb. 27-28. The event takes place as Hanoi marks two decades since it was recognised as ‘City for Peace’ by UNESCO.

DPRK-USA Hanoi Summit Vietnam coincides with the 20th anniversary of declaration of Hanoi as ‘City for Peace’.
Lots of visitors flock to Hanoi as the summit is taking place soon
Pedestrian streets around Hoan Kiem Lake is busier than ever at weekends

Hoan Kiem Lake area is decorated with flags of the United States, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Vietnam

Main streets are decorated with flags of the United States, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Vietnam.
Many tourists go for double decker to enjoy the bustling atmospheres on Hanoi’s streets as the summit is nearing.

According to a report on VNA

Breaking news: U.S., North Korea could agree to end Korean War at Vietnam summit

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South Korea’s presidential office said on Monday the United States and North Korea could agree to declare the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War in a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the Yonhap news agency reported.

“The possibility is there,” presidential office spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a press briefing in Seoul when asked if an end-of-war declaration was on the summit agenda, according to Yonhap.

The two leaders will meet in Hanoi on Wednesday and Thursday, eight months after their historic summit in Singapore, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, where they pledged to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

Featured photo (FILE): A directional sign bearing North Korean and U.S. flags is seen near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, South Korea, January 19, 2018 @ REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Robert Birsel
This article was first posted on Reuters

Vietnamese e-commerce sector will be driven by 3 trends in 2019

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With 2018, Vietnamese e-commerce has gone through its most exciting year yet, starting with big funding news across the board and ending with Google and Temasek’s optimistic prediction of a 43-percent growth for the whole sector from now till 2025.

The positive growth looks very likely to continue into 2019. Along with that would be some interesting market movements.

Here are 3 things to expect from the Vietnamese e-commerce sector this year, according to experts from iPrice Group.

The rise of single-market merchants

According to iPrice’s data on the Vietnamese market, single-market merchants such as Tiki, Thegioididong and Sendo.vn made several encouraging improvements in 2018 in terms of attracting both user traffic and investment.

The most impressive improvement belongs to Tiki. Their monthly website traffic increased by a whopping 80% within only 6 months, which took them from the 4th highest position among e-commerce websites in Vietnam all the way to 2nd place by the end of 2018.

Similarly, Sendo.vn also grew by 55% in monthly website traffic in a period of 6 months and maintained a healthy 5th place in Vietnam, one rank behind Thegioididong.

All three of these merchants also did well enough in 2018 to rank among the top 10 merchants with the highest monthly web traffic in Southeast Asia.

These positive results arrived soon after Tiki and Sendo.vn announced their success in raising new funding. In particular, Tiki received $44.04 million from JD.com in late 2017 while Sendo acquired $51 million from various investors last August.

It seems that by focusing on one market and utilizing their knowledge on the local shopping behaviours, single-market merchants like Tiki and Sendo.vn have a certain advantage over the multinational competitors Lazada and Shopee. And now that they’re starting to gain access to better funding, Vietnamese single-market merchants might very well surprise everyone and win big in 2019.

Digital payment gaining popularity

Right in the first month of 2019, MoMo – one of the most popular digital wallets in Vietnam, announced that they had successfully closed their series C funding round. Before that, in 2018, Moca – a local competitor, also started a partnership with GrabPay and expanded their digital payment services. In a similar fashion, other online payment services like ZaloPay and ViettelPay have been showing signs of becoming more serious in their attempts to acquire users.

All these movements promise to make digital payment more popular with Vietnamese online shoppers.

According to Google and Temasek’s report, only 25% of Vietnamese choose to use digital payment, while the rest still prefer CoD (Cash-on-delivery) for their only transactions.

While CoD helps ease the minds of customers, extra charges on CoD transactions for logistics are a problem for e-commerce merchants. Moreover, CoD is also shown to increases the risk of product return.

Therefore, the increase in popularity of digital payment in Vietnam thanks to advocating efforts from service providers like MoMo, GrabPay, ZaloPay, etc. will bring a lot of benefits to the whole e-commerce sector in Vietnam in 2019.

Entertainment and engagement while shopping

After focusing on price-based promotion campaigns in previous years, e-commerce merchants in Vietnam have started to adopt some innovative strategies in their user acquisition efforts in 2018. In particular, they began to provide customers with more entertainment values.

The most prominent follower of this trend must be Shopee. For this year Singles Day, besides their usual promotions, Shopee also introduced several interactive games for their app users as well as a live TV show featuring some of the biggest Vietnamese pop stars, the first of its kind in Vietnam.

Shopee’s main competitors in Vietnam, Lazada and Tiki also created interactive games on their apps and websites.

As we can see from these programs, e-commerce merchants in Vietnam have finally realized that the most effective way for them to acquire users and keep them around is by engaging with them and making them feel more involved. This trend will certainly become even more notable in the upcoming year.

Source: iPrice Insights

***

All data on the total visits on desktop and mobile web in this study were taken from global traffic figures from the respective regional sites. Insights based on SimilarWeb data.

About iPrice Group

iPrice Group is a meta-search website operating in seven countries across Southeast Asia namely in; Malaysia Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. Currently, iPrice compares and catalogs more than 500 million products and receives more than 15 million monthly visits across the region. iPrice currently operates three business lines: price comparison for electronics and health & beauty; product discovery for fashion and home & living; and coupons across all verticals.

Foreign investors set their eyes on Vietnam’s pharmaceutical industry

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Due to its rapid growth within the past ten years ranking 13th in the world in term of growth speed, many foreign investors eye Vietnam’s pharmaceutical industry.

In 2017, the pharmaceutical industry’s import value topped $2.8 billion increasing 10.1 percent compared to 2016 and approximated $3 billion in 2018.

According to economists, the industry has potential to develop in 2019 and the next few years.

According to the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), from 2010 till now, the industry has seen growth and posted double-digit earnings growth. It is forecast that the industry will continue maintaining its growth rate to 2022.

Nevertheless, the industry has met 52.5 percent of demand while the remaining must be imported.

At present, 180 Vietnamese pharmaceutical firms including local and foreign direct investment (FDI). Of these 194 plants under 158 firms achieve GMP- WHO standard.

However, firms just manufacture simple medicine and generic drugs, a pharmaceutical drug that has the same chemical substance as the drug that was originally developed, patented and innovated, for local need or to do outwork for foreign companies.

Everagely, the country consumes around 60,000 tons of different pharmaceutical materials and more than 80 percent of materials are imported mainly from China and India.

Currently, when Vietnam integrates with global economies, stronger M&A trend between pharmaceutical local and foreign companies will take place both in production and distribution.

For instance, the US-based Abbott possesses 51.7 percent of shares of Domesco company and owns Glomed Pharmaceutical Company. Japanese Taisho Pharmaceutical has increased share ownership ratio at Hau Giang Pharmaceutical Company to 34.3 percent.

Chairman of the Indian Business Chamber in Vietnam (Incham) Ramesh Anand, said that Indian firms have paid more attention to investment and business in Vietnam, a potential market and a bridge to get access to the whole East Asia.

As Vietnamese people have higher income, they require high quality healthcare. Additionally, the country is an attractive destination for medical tourism with mushrooming healthcare institutions for serving overseas customers.

Accordingly, Vietnam is an important market for herb and traditional Indian medicine.

India has considered Vietnam as a vital and potential market in term of medical equipment and medicine.

Economists also said that the pharmaceutical industry is expected to leap by 10-15 percent in the next few years and post revenue of $7.3 billion in 2019.

On one side, M&A trend helps Vietnamese entrepreneurs to improve business management , expand shares and develop distribution networks. On the other side, it has legal risk triggering lawsuits. Therefore, enterprises should find information of their partners and understand contract terms clearly to avoid problems later.

 

Source: SGGP News, By MINH HAI - Translated by UYEN PHUONG

Bamboo Airways buys 10 Boeing planes during Trump-Kim summit

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Vietnamese carrier Bamboo Airways will sign a deal with Boeing Co to purchase 10 planes on the sidelines of this week’s Trump-Kim summit, an airline executive said on Sunday.

The carrier, which is owned by property and leisure company FLC Group and made its first flights in January, placed a provisional order last year for 20 Boeing 787 widebody jets worth $5.6 billion at list prices.

“We will sign with Boeing a deal to buy 10 more Boeing 787s. This is different from the deal signed earlier for 20 Boeing planes,” said the executive who declined to be named due to the confidentiality of the matter.

“That means we will have ordered 30 Boeing 787s. The deal will be signed during the summit,” the executive said.

Reporting by Khanh Vu; Editing by Keith Weir on Reuters

Kim Jong Un has boarded a train to Vietnam

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North Korean leader takes scenic route via China to Wednesday’s meeting in Hanoi

Kim Jong Un has boarded a train to Vietnam for his second summit with US president Donald Trump, North Korea state media have confirmed.

The North Korean leader was accompanied by Kim Yong Chol, who has been a key negotiator in talks with the US, and by his sister Kim Yo Jong, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.

There was a report of a green and yellow train similar to one used in the past by Kim crossing into the Chinese border city of Dandong via a bridge. Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret and it could take more than two days for the train to travel thousands of miles through China to Vietnam.

The Trump-Kim meeting is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi.

Their first summit last June in Singapore ended without substantive agreements on the North’s nuclear disarmament and triggered a months-long stalemate in negotiations as Washington and Pyongyang struggled with the sequencing of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and the removal of US-led sanctions against the North.

 

The North Korean leader is accompanied by his sister, Kim Yo Jong. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters

Vietnam’s foreign ministry announced on Saturday that Kim would pay an official goodwill visit to the country “in the coming days” in response to an invitation by the president Nguyễn Phú Trọng, who is also the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party.

In his meeting with Trump, Kim is expected to seek a US commitment for improved bilateral relations and partial sanctions relief while trying to minimise any concessions on his nuclear facilities and weapons.

Kim wants to leverage his nuclear and missile programme for economic and security benefits, but doubts remains as to whether he is prepared to deal away an arsenal that he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.

Last year, North Korea suspended its nuclear and long-range missile tests and unilaterally dismantled its nuclear testing ground and parts of a rocket launch facility without the presence of outside experts. None of those steps were seen as meaningful cutbacks to the North’s weapons capability.

While North Korea has repeatedly demanded that the US take corresponding measures, including sanctions relief, Washington has called for more concrete steps from Pyongyang toward denuclearisation.

Hanoi has been gearing up for the summit with heightened security. Officials say the colonial-era government guest house in central Hanoi is expected to be the venue for the Trump-Kim meeting, with the nearby Metropole hotel as a backup. Streets around the two buildings have been decorated with flowers and the flags of North Korea, the US and Vietnam. Workers were also putting final touches on the International Media Centre.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry says 2,600 members of the foreign press have registered for the event. A traffic ban along Kim’s possible arrival route has also been announced.

The Communist party’s Nhân Dân newspaper on Friday quoted the department of roads as saying the ban would first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger, and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170km (105-mile) stretch of highway from Đồng Đăng, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7pm on Monday to 2pm on Tuesday, followed by a complete ban on Tuesday on all vehicles from 6am to 2pm.

The people’s committee in Lạng Sơn province, where the Đồng Đăng railway station is located, issued a statement on Friday instructing the road operator to clean the highway stretch and suspend road works, among other things, from 24-28 February as “a political task”.

Vietnam arrested two former information ministers on Saturday on suspicion of mismanaging public investment

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Vietnam’s police arrests two ex-ministers suspected of public funds mismanagement.

Major corruption crackdown has netted numerous senior officials. Reuters reported on Saturday.

Nguyen Bac Son and Truong Minh Tuan were arrested on suspicion of mismanagement and violations regarding the use of such investment, they said.

Communist-ruled Vietnam is undergoing a major corruption crackdown that has sent a politburo member to prison and many other senior officials to jail or trials in a wide range of sectors.

The Supreme People’s Procuracy issued a prosecution order for Son and Tuan on Saturday for “violations of regulations on management and use of public investment capital that cause serious consequences,” the police said.

The news comes as the world’s media descend on Hanoi for the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled on Feb. 27-28, following the two leaders’ historic June meeting in Singapore.

Son was Vietnam’s information minister from 2011 to 2016 and Tuan held the position from 2016 to last year when he was suspended for mismanagement at state telecoms firm MobiFone.

The Communist Party’s inspection committee found MobiFone, one of Vietnam’s top three mobile carriers by subscription, overpaid for a 95 percent stake in a loss-making pay TV provider.

MobiFone bought the stake in private pay TV provider Audio Visual Global JSC for nearly 8.9 trillion dong ($386.1 million) in late 2015. Several senior information ministry officials and MobiFone executives were arrested in this case.

‘Bring your own cup’ trend catches on among eco-conscious bubble tea fans in Vietnam

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Fans of bubble tea in Vietnam are finally waking up to the environmental harms of single-use plastics that come with their favorite drink and making a habit of bringing their own cups and straws whenever they feel like slurping some boba goodness.

Bubble tea, also known as bubble milk tea or simply boba, is a Taiwanese tea-based drink made by mixing tea with flavors of milk before adding a wide range of toppings such as chewy tapioca balls, fruit jelly, grass jelly, agar jelly, and puddings.

The sweet-and-rich drink has been popular in Vietnam for years, with hundreds to thousands of bubble tea shops springing up in every corner of major cities.

Most boba shops in Vietnam offer their drinks in sing-use plastic cups, accompanied by single-use plastic straws, regardless of whether it’s a takeaway or dine-in order.

This has contributed to the plastic waste problem in Vietnam, which dumps around 0.28-0.73 million metric tons of plastics into the ocean every year, the fourth highest source of oceanic plastic pollution globally, according to a 2015 report.

But die-hard bubble tea fans in Vietnam have decided their favorite drink don’t necessarily have to come at the expense of the environment,

Recently, some youths who visit bubble tea shops in the country have got into the habit of bringing their own reusable cups and straws and refusing to take plastics from the store.

“My employees have been drinking ‘zero-waste’ boba for nearly two years,” said Du My, who owns a spa in Ho Chi Minh City.

“But for it to work, everyone in the group must have a habit of bringing their own cups,” she said.

Thanh Hoa, a 27-year-old from Ho Chi Minh City, said employees at a boba store that she frequently visits are all very welcoming of the idea.

“You just need to bring a cup with a known capacity so store employees can easily measure your drink,” Hoa said.

Ngoc Hien, who works at a bubble tea shop in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City, said he was confused at first when a customer brought her own cup to the store and asked him to fill it with her drink instead of using a plastic cup.

“But I understood the reason behind it after having my senior co-workers explained it to me about [the harms of] plastic cups,” Hien said.

However, he said the number of customers who bring their own cups to buy bubble tea is still rare.

“There was one incident when I visited a bubble tea shop in [downtown Ho Chi Minh City] and was refused service after asking employees to store my drink in my own cup,” Hoa said.

“Determined to drink only zero-waste bubble tea, I left to find another store,” she added.

According to Du My, bringing your own cup can be a difficult and troublesome habit to get oneself into, but encouragement and examples from friends and co-workers can go a long way in reshaping a person’s perception of the plastic waste problem.

“[My group of friends] kept reminding one another to bring our own cups, and before you know it, it has already become a habit,” My said.

Source: Tuoitrenews

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