Vietnam has set a goal of making the final of the AFF Futsal Championship – HDBank Cup 2017, scheduled to take place at Phu Tho Gymnasium in Ho Chi Minh City, from October 26 to November 3.
Vietnam’s futsal team have left for a friendly tournament in China, which is considered a warm-up for their 2017 AFF Futsal Championship campaign.
The information was announced by Le Hoai Anh, Secretary General of the Vietnam Football Federation, at a press conference for the tournament held in the city, on October 18.
The week-long championship will bring together nine teams from across Southeast Asia, with Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar and the Philippines making up Group A, while Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Timor Leste competing in Group B.
The participants will play in a round robin group stage to decide the top two teams that will progress into the semifinals.
The tournament is jointly held by the VFF and the Voice of Vietnam and also serves as the qualifiers for the 2018 AFC Futsal Championship, with the four places being granted to the four semifinalists.
According to VFF Vice President Tran Quoc Tuan, the successful organisation of the championship will serve as a premise for Vietnam to continue hosting international-level competitions in the future.
At the 2015 championship, Vietnam finished in fourth place overall after losing 5-6 to Malaysia in the third-place match.
The world-famous Vietnamese violinist Bui Cong Duy will perform four concertos for violin at two concerts on the night of October 25 and 26 at the Hanoi Opera House, 1 Trang Tien Street, Hanoi.
The concerts will be conducted by Japanese conductor Honna Tetsuji and the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra.
Duy will play F. Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto E minor, op.64 and L.V. Beethoven – Violin Concerto D major, op.61 on the concert during the concert on October 25 and M. Bruch – Violin Concerto No.1 G minor, op.26 and J. Brahms – Violin Concerto D major, op.77 during the concert on October 26.
Ticket prices are from VND300,000 to VND600,000. All tickets are available at Hanoi Opera House or can be booked online at ticketvn.com.
Having smaller charter capital and not being as well-known as big companies like Hoa Phat and The Gioi Di Dong, smaller companies still can make fat profits and become ‘kings’ in their business fields.
By the end of September 2017, the number of listed stocks had reached 1,400, being traded on three bourses in Vietnam. The number of listed companies is on the rise and are from all fields of the economy.
Transportation & entertainment services
Tay Ninh Cable Car Tour Company (TCT), West Coach Station JSC (WCS), Superdong Kien Giang (SKG) and Dam Sen Water Park (DSN) are the only players in their fields.
TCT is the only company which carries travelers from the base of the mountain to Chua Ba (Ba Temple) on cable cars. Therefore, it has the right to set the selling price, which allows it have the highest gross profit margin.
WCS, which runs the Western Bus Station, an important transport hub that connects HCMC and western provinces, doesn’t have any competition and has good business performance.
The company’s gross profit margin is high at 58 percent as it doesn’t have to pay much in sale costs while its management costs are also low.
As one of very few carriers of passengers and cargo to Phu Quoc Island, SKG has been making high profits for many years. Its gross profit margin and net profit margin are 61 percent and 54 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, DSN, which runs the largest water park in inner HCMC, reported net profit margin of 42 percent.
SCS – the goose that lays golden eggs
Saigon Cargo Service (SCS) share entered the bourse last July. Due to the concentrated shareholder structure, there have not been many SCS transactions.
However, SCS enjoys a near monopoly in terminal services, leasing storehouses and cargo carrying at Tan Son Nhat Airport. SCSC is the only company recognized by CAAV as cargo terminal.
Established in 2008 with initial charter capital of VND300 billion, SCS capitalization value has soared to VND4.5 trillion.
The ‘irradiation’ king An Phu (APC)
APC has seen high growth rates in recent years. It reported gross profit margin of 68 percent in the first six months of the year and net profit margin of 38 percent.
Analysts noted that APC’s growth is not from higher output or lower production costs, but from the service fee increase.
MB Securities reported that the service fee set by APC increased by 20-25 percent after Thai Son merged with An Phu. The company is the only service provider in the field.
A U.K. travel site has built an interactive map that shows the high and low travel seasons around the world.
The joys of traveling depend a lot on whether you are a crowd person or a lover of solitude and/or cheap flights. Sometimes, an unexpected turnout can kill the whole experience.
And that’s why this new animated map developed by the U.K.-based travel site LastMinute.com could be the answer to your plans for world travel.
According to the map, Vietnam’s low seasons are between April and June and September and November.
The country is most crowded in July and August.
Travel guide Lonely Planet has also suggested that the low seasons are “perhaps the best time” to travel the country.
The calculations may make sense, as April, May and June are usually the hottest months in the tropical country, while September and October are almost always soaked and cursed with storms.
Yet November, when the weather becomes more gentle, is not really a low season, at least not last year.
Figures from Vietnam National Administration of Tourism showed that November received the highest number of foreign visitors last year, followed by August, December and July.
In some countries, the low season lasts longer than others.
Indonesia has the longest low season in Southeast Asia, lasting from October through May. Norway and Finland both have a seven-month low season.
Bolivia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic boast a six-month period of peak travel.
Finance officials from the 21 APEC economies gathered in the central province of Quang Nam’s Hoi An ancient city to draft the Joint Ministerial Statement, on October 19.
The event also attracted the participation of delegates from the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
They set out to review all of the four policy priorities in 2017, including Long-term Investment in Infrastructure, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance and Financial Inclusion, which were initially discussed at the Senior Finance Officials’ Meeting (SFOM) in Ninh Binh province in May.
Review on the Finance Ministers’ Process (FMP) will also be the focus of the ongoing meeting.
The outcomes of the cooperation in the four priorities will be reported to the Ministers on October 21 and a Joint Ministerial Statement will be released on the regional cooperation issues, policy themes and directions for the APEC FMP in the time ahead.
In an interview with Vietnam News Agency reporters, John A Unware, First Assistant Secretary of the Strategy Division under Papua Guinea’s Department of Treasury, said that he was impressed by Vietnam’s meticulous preparations for the event. As his country will host the next event, Papua Guinea must learn a lot from those with significant experiences such as Vietnam, he said.
John A Unware said that technical cooperation among enterprises and financial education for local people will be the priorities at the next event.
APEC is united in a drive to build a dynamic, sustainable and harmonious Asia-Pacific community by boosting free and open trade and investment, promoting and accelerating regional economic integration, encouraging economic and technical cooperation, and facilitating a favorable and sustainable business environment. APEC initiatives turn policy goals into concrete results and agreements into tangible benefits.
The idea of APEC was firstly publicly broached by former Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke during a speech in Seoul, in the Republic of Korea, on 31 January 1989. Ten months later, 12 Asia-Pacific economies met in Canberra, Australia, to establish the APEC. The founding members were: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the United States.
China, Hong Kong (China) and Chinese Taipei joined in 1991. Mexico and Papua New Guinea followed in 1993. Chile acceded in 1994 and in 1998, Peru, Russia and Vietnam joined the forum, taking the full membership to 21.
This is the second time Vietnam has hosted the APEC Year after the first in 2006.
Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM City has been named in the Top 25 Most Sleep-Friendly Airports according to The Guide to Sleeping in Airports’ survey.
Travellers were asked to rate airports worldwide on The Guide to Sleeping in Airports website and the results were published on October 15. Tan Son Nhat Airport ranked 21st in the Top 25 Most Sleep-Friendly Airports and 19th in the Top 25 Best Airports for a Layover.
A representative of Tan Son Nhat Airport said this was the recognition of the staff’s effort to improve the services.
Since 2016, they have constantly upgraded many sections of the airport. The international terminal was expanded, new duty-free stores opened, 12 automatic check-in kiosks installed and luggage storeroom was expanded.
Twenty free sleeping chairs, 10 sleep pods and a playing area for children that covers 40 square metres have also been installed.
The Hanoi Department of Transport has requested Uber and Grab report on their revenues and the number of cars and drivers.
Director of the Hanoi Department of Transport Vu Van Vien recently signed a document requesting firms which transport passengers, including Uber and Grab, to provide the information.
The companies will have to report their revenues, the number of cars and drivers as well as their measures to ensure traffic safety to the department before October 30 this year.
The Hanoi Taxi Association said that the number of Uber and Grab taxis has reached 50,000 nationwide, including around 25,000 in Hanoi.
They claimed that this had added more pressure to traffic jams to the city.
Meanwhile, the HCM City Transport Department has licensed around 24,000 Uber and Grab cars as of September, raising the total vehicles offering lifts in the city to 35,000 to date, double the planned number for 2020.
The Hanoi Taxi Association has proposed to the Ministry of Transport to stop the pilot operations of Uber and Grab. However, the ministry opposed this, saying that Uber and Grab are not breaking competition rules.
Vinasun taxis in HCM City used decals to oppose Uber and Grab, urging management authorities to stop their operation in Vietnam.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai said that the ministry had instructed the Competition Management Board to investigate to see whether Vinasun had violated the competition law or not.
There’s no single defining image of the nation or its women
Modern Vietnamese girls taking selfies and old grandmas trudging to the market with fruit baskets and chickens wearing a weather beaten ‘non la’ (conical hat) – the typical image when I think of women in Vietnam!
The clash of past and present, the old ladies planting rice in pajama outfits and young high school girls chattily pedaling away in spotless traditional ‘ao dai’ compared with office girls in tight black skirts whizzing across town on brand new motorbikes and intrepid university lasses with laptops in coffee shops are part of what makes this country so hard to pin down. There’s no single defining image of the nation or its women.
Vietnam celebrates the qualities and value of its female population twice a year – International Women’s Day on March 8 and National Women’s Day on October 20. Generally, in March, it’s a fun time with flowers, chocolates, eating out for dinner and families hosting meals for the generations of women in the family while the national day reflects the achievements and progress of our better half.
Both days acknowledge the contributions of women to the freedom of the country. Women fought besides men during the wars that plagued Vietnam for most of the last century and indeed, historically. Hai Ba Trung is a street name you’ll see in almost every urban district and refers to the two sisters Trung Trac and Trung Nhi who fought for independence against the Han Dynasty. Nguyen Thi Dinh was Vietnam’s first female general during the American war. Thousands of women supplied the army, stumbling through the jungle trails carrying arms, food and equipment across the country.
October also acknowledges women’s contributions in education, health, science and other areas. Yet, progress in Vietnamese women’s lives is uneven. Unusual to Western eyes are the countless women laboring under back-breaking conditions in the countryside, or at constructions sites although the endless lines of factory production or assembly line girls are common enough. More than 70% of the agricultural workforce is women; however, even the transition from farm worker to industrial worker and the rise in salary are a marked improvement.
Three Vietnamese women smile in this photo taken in Yen Bai Province, located in northwestern Vietnam, by Nguyen The Bang.
Even though Vietnam has passed laws for equality, particularly with women in mind there’s a long way to go. Fortunately, “The 2006 Law on Gender Equality highlights the quality of women’s rights in Vietnam. The Social Insurance Law (2006), Law on Residence (2006), the Law on Domestic Violence Prevention (2007), and the Nationality Act (2008) also contain provisions to protect the rights of women.”
Although Vietnamese women contribute massively to the national economy, run many small-scale non-state businesses and occupy more than half of the office and service industry jobs in the country, their representation in the government runs at around 20-25%. Running the country may actually produce more changes than holding the reins as these women control more of the changes in technology, money, administration and social welfare.
Modernity, lifestyles and education are changing women fast in this country; what is mostly holding women back are family beliefs; stay at home, produce a son as a sign of respect (really!) and do what the family wants regardless of personal ambitions.
Here’s an example: I know two women in Hoi An – the first is a well-educated, young married woman whose husband runs his business and she starts businesses often in conjunction with other women in the town. Each owns their businesses in their own name and shows common support and interest in others’ work as well as sharing household chores.
The other woman, a country girl, runs a café and the husband helps out occasionally, most sitting with his clients. He forbids his wife from having male friends or pursuing an education while she looks after the kids, the café, and the money and just about everything else. He shows no interest in her wants or needs. She owns nothing and often dreams of running away to start a new life. One day soon, I believe, she’ll get her wish.
Vietnamese women participate in a march in this picture taken by Vu Ngoc Hoang
Social change is slowly becoming greater – more women staying longer in the workforce, delaying childbirth for financial independence, a growing unwillingness to marry simply because it’s expected of her and the realization that there’s life beyond being a man’s servant. What sometimes shocks me is the forcefulness with which some young women vow never to marry a Vietnamese man. Yep, the times are changing.
They are breaking out of the traditional mold of Vietnamese life. And with that, they may create an even more interesting Vietnam…
Perhaps this is the achievement to celebrate this national women’s day.
Well done, ladies!
Vietnamese women go to work in the fields in Ninh Binh Province, located in northern Vietnam. Photo: Vu Duc Phuong
A multifaceted Vietnamese company will bring South Korean convenience chain GS25 to Vietnam via a joint venture with its parent firm, a representative said on Tuesday, confirming speculation.
Son Kim Group, through its retail arm Son Kim Retail, will team up with South Korea’s GS Retail to form a joint venture to develop the chain in Vietnam, Nguyen Hong Trang confirmed at a business meeting in Ho Chi Minh City.
Trang, a member of the board of directors of Son Kim Fashion, will head up Son Kim Retail in Vietnam.
Seen as a move to tap the potential of the retail market in the growing Southeast Asian economy, Trang said that the first store is scheduled to open in Ho Chi Minh City later this year.
In August, Inside Retail Asia reported that GS Retail would form a joint venture with Son Kim Group for the GS25 convenience chain to make its Vietnam debut. According to the report, GS Retail already holds a 30 percent stake and Vietnam is its first-ever foreign market.
The South Korean firm was reportedly scheduled to sign a master franchise agreement with the joint venture to receive royalties on trademark rights and operations.
Son Kim Group, currently operating in the fields of fashion, communication and real-estate, has decided to expand into the retail business after realizing its potential for growth, Trang explained at the meeting.
“We believe our convenience chain will change the consumer behavior of the Vietnamese market,” she said.
A Vietnamese woman recently gave birth to the heaviest baby ever born in Vietnam, much to the delight of the family.
The bundle of joy, weighing a whopping 7.1kg, was born on October 14 at Vinh Tuong General Hospital in Vinh Phuc Province, located in northern Vietnam.
The newborn boy, regarded as the largest in the country, is the second child in the family.
The mother gave birth to the baby boy by C-section.
On October 15, after conducting several tests, the hospital confirmed that both the baby and mother are healthy.
The mother has so far been unable to breastfeed the child. Until she is able to do so, doctors will feed the baby with healthy amounts of special milk.
Tran Trung Quan, the newborn’s 42-year-old father, says the baby’s older brother was born weighing 4.2 kg, is now four years old, healthy, and a little taller than most of his peers.
Quan said his wife had not been on any special nutritional diet during pregnancy.
Vu Ba Quyet, director of the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that newborns weighing over 4kg must be carefully examined and observed in order to prevent diabetes.
The 7.1kg newborn is healthy, but doctors say he still needs to be carefully observed to ensure proper development and growth.
“There have been babies born here weighing almost 7kg and 6.5kg, but, at 7.1kg, this is the heaviest yet,” claimed Quyet.
The second heaviest healthy baby was born weighing 7kg in Gia Lai Province. In 2016, a baby in Nam Dinh Province was born at 6.1 kg. There were also two babies born at 6.5kg in Da Nang City in 2016.
The heaviest baby ever born to a healthy mother was delivered at 10.2kg in Italy in 1955, weighing 10.2kg.
Recently, another ‘magical case’ occurred in Vietnamese obstetrics.
On September 29, 2017 a mother gave birth to healthy triplets at Can Tho Maternity Hospital in the Mekong Delta. The mother lives in Kien Giang Province, neighboring Can Tho City.
The mother’s waters broke prematurely during her 36th week of pregnancy.
Thanks to prompt treatment and the effective coordination of doctors from several departments, three baby girls were successfully delivered. Both the mother and newborns were healthy.
Triplet pregnancy is quite rare and can pose many risks to the mother.
Occurring in only one in 8,000 pregnancies, triplet pregnancy can cause premature labor, high blood pressure, and gestational diabetes.
This Hanoi egg-coffee shop nestled in a small alley on Bui Vien Street in HCM City is seen as a familiar address of travelers who love the aromatic flavour of northern coffee.
The coffee shop has a quaint, elegant style.
It is owned and operated by a Hanoian girl, Le Phuong Nhung, 34.
The shop is full of beautiful old books and hand-made gifts.
This cosy corner is perfect for groups of friends to enjoy an egg-coffee and chat.
The walls are decorated with black-and-white photographs of old Hanoi.
The narrow wooden stairs.
They also serve cakes and sandwiches.
Sharing on TripAdvisor, Linda Schutt, an Australian tourist, said she loves ‘Goc Hanoi’ (Hanoi corner) coffee shop, tucked away on a small alley in Saigon, it is an unforgettable experience.
The annual Vietnam Open tennis tournament will be held from October 21 to 29 in Ho Chi Minh City.
The ATP Challenger event is worth 50,000 USD and will grant 90 points to the winners in both, the singles and doubles categories.
This year, the competition has lured athletes with top world rankings, including former world No. 8 Mikhail Youzny from Russia, two former world U18 No. 1 champions, Yuki Bhambri of India and Max Purcell from Australia, as well as 2015 winner Saketh Myneni from India.
Vietnamese No 1 Ly Hoang Nam and national champion Pham Minh Tuan, received a wild card to compete at the event.
Nam will also pair with his Wimbledon partner, Sumit Nagal, to take part in the doubles event. The pair won the Wimbledon trophy in 2015.
The tournament, which is entitled Hung Thinh Vietnam Open, will see Alize Lim, a Vietnamese French athlete, as the tournament’s ambassador. Lim currently ranks No 150 in the world. Her best ranking was No. 135 in 2014. She will have an exhibition match on October 25 at the Lan Anh Tennis Club.
The matches will be aired live on The thao TV and The thao Tin tuc HD channels.
Though Idemitsu Kosan has impressed Vietnamese with high-quality, friendly service, it will still meet difficulties to cement its position in the Vietnamese market, experts say.
A favourite topic for gossip among office workers, taxi and truck drivers recently has been the opening of a new foreign-owned filling station in Thang Long IZ in Hanoi. A clip posted on the internet shows that while waiting for their cars to be filled with petrol, cars owners can have their glasses cleaned for free. This is unprecedented in Vietnam.
Vietnamese consumers love Japan-made products and services. And they now have one more reason to go to Idemitsu Q8, the filling station, for petrol as they have heard that the station can control the volume of fuel provided to customers at a high accuracy of 0.01 liter.
The station is at an advantage because many customers can see fraud at many Vietnamese-owned filling stations.
Some Vietnamese commented on their Facebook that they have a good impression about the appearance of Hiroaki Honjo, CEO of IQ8, at the filling station on October 10. He was there in the rain and was seen bowing to customers.
Ngo Tri Long, a pricing expert, said that the presence of the foreign petroleum distributors in Vietnam would benefit customers because it will create competition among service providers which forces domestic companies to upgrade their quality.
However, experts said that, though gaining some initial achievements, the Japanese giant would find it difficult to squeeze into the petroleum retail market controlled by Vietnamese companies.
According to Ban Viet Securities, the typical characteristic of the petroleum distribution sector is that enterprises with large networks of retail points win the competition. Customers tend to buy petrol at retail points most convenient to them, and won’t go to Thang Long IZ for petrol just because the price is low or the service is good.
Therefore, competition among distributors will mostly be due to capability of expanding networks and increasing the number of agents.
Vietnam has 14,000 filling stations in the country, of which 11,000 are run by sales agents and 3,000 owned by general agents or distributors.
Petrolimex is the largest distributor with 5,200 stations, holding 48 percent of the market share, followed by PVOil, Thanh Le and Saigon Petro which have 3,000, 1,150 and 1,000 stations, respectively.
In the first six months of 2017, Petrolimex opened 36 filling stations.
The other disadvantage of Idemitsu is that its supply sources would be limited, while Vietnamese companies can buy products from different sources.
Seventeen investment funds have shown interest in Dung Quat’s IPO, expected to take place by the end of the year.
Besides investment funds, the list of investors gunning for a Dung Quat stake includes the world’s leading conglomerates in the oil & gas sector, including Repsol (Spain), Gazprom (Russia) and Petrolimex, where the Japanese JX Nippon Oil & Energy is a strategic shareholder.
The oil refinery, which holds one-third of the petroleum market share in Vietnam, plans to sell 4-6 percent of its stake.
The shares will be offered at the starting price of VND14,600 per share. If successful, Dung Quat would have capitalization value of $2.1 billion, while the State would collect $83.6 million from the deal.
After the IPO, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) plans to continue transferring a 49 percent stake to strategic shareholders by 2018, which means that the State’s ownership ratio in Dung Quat will be lower than 50 percent. This will allow private investors to control the No 1 oil refinery in Vietnam.
“Oil refineries really attract investors,” said Michel Tosto from Ban Viet Securities.
Dung Quat’s business performance is impressive. In 2016, it had VND74 trillion in revenue and net profit of VND4.492 trillion, which means a rate of return on equity at 14 percent.
In the first half of the year, the revenue of the oil refinery reached VND38.6 trillion, an increase of 15 percent over the same period last year. The amount of cash Dung Quat has is VND15.179 trillion.
Under the current law, foreign investors are not allowed to distribute petrol products in Vietnam, unless they have oil refineries in Vietnam.
Therefore, analysts predict that foreign conglomerates will buy a stake in Vietnam’s oil refinery to obtain the right to distribute petrol products.
The Vietnamese energy market is witnessing the highest growth rates in the region. The total demand for petroleum products in Vietnam in 2015 was 17.5 million cubic meters. According to the World Bank, the average petroleum consumption per capita in Vietnam has increased by 5 percent per annum. The demand mostly comes from three sectors – transport (65 percent), industrial production (20 percent) and people’s consumption.
Dung Quat’s biggest rival in the upcoming years is Nghi Son Refinery. The $9 billion project is nearly completing construction before the trial run by early 2018. If running at full capacity, Nghi Son would be able to provide 80 percent of the domestic petroleum demand.
Armin van Buuren will open his Asia tour with a night in Saigon.
World renowned DJ Armin van Buuren is going to be bringing the beats back to Saigon this December to kick off his Asia tour, the event’s organizers have announced.
Organizers said the Dutch DJ will be performing in front of 17,000 fans.
No further details on the performance have been revealed. Last year, Jakarta and Singapore were also part of his global tour.
Van Buuren performed in Hanoi in late 2015, when he promised to return.
The 40-year-old artist, who is also a record producer and remixer, was ranked the No. 1 DJ by DJ Mag for four years in a row between 2007 and 2010, and has been held No. 4 position since 2015.
In 2014, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording for his single “This Is What It Feels Like” featuring Trevor Guthrie.
Martin Garrix, currently the world’s No. 1 DJ, performed in Saigon in September last year and DJ Afrojack was on set in December.
DJ superstars Skrillex, Tiesto and Zedd also played the city in 2015.
