The Vinashin Trading and Manufacturing Joint Stock Company (Shinec) on March 21 signed a joint venture contract with the Viking Cordage Company of the Czech Republic to produce ropes for sea going vessels for the first time in Vietnam.
The factory will be built at an investment capital of almost $5 million in the Vinashin-Shinec industrial zone in the northern port city of Hai Phong. It will specialise in making all types of rope from artificial and natural fiber for ships, and fishing nets.
This is the second foreign-invested project in the Vinashin-Shinec industrial zone. Earlier, the Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (Vinashin) signed a $30 million contract with Finland's Mac Gregor firm to produce ship deck equipment.
The Asia Packaging Industries Vietnam Ltd. Company (API) inagurated an aluminium can factory in the My Phuoc industrial zone in the southern province of Binh Duong on March 21.
The API Vietnam is a $40 million wholly-foreign owned joint venture with the Toyo Seikan Kaisha (TSK), the world's biggest packaging maker, holding 55 percent of the stock. The remaining 45 percent is held by the Davelyn Steel Company from Hong Kong, a leading Southeast Asian metal packaging maker.
The new factory has brought the number of projects operational in the My Phuoc industrial zone to a total of almost 200. Investment came from 16 countries and territories from around the world, totalling over $1.4 billion and providing jobs for over 28,000 workers.
Representatives from forty-four leading corporations and companies in Thailand are on a visit to Vietnam to examine the country’s investment environment.
The Thai businesspeople had a working meeting with the Department of Foreign Investment under the Ministry of Planning and Investment in Hanoi on Mar. 21, where they were particularly interested in issues like land clearance, industrial protection policy, compensation for land clearance in industrial zones and land lease duration.
Phan Huu Thang, Director of the department, said at the meeting that this visit once again showed the Thai investors’ interest in the country.
Thailand and Vietnam have established multi-faceted relations, especially economic ties, he told the guests, adding that Vietnam aims at facilitating foreign investors in doing business in the country.
Representatives from 300 local enterprises were informed about South African investment policies, customs and immigration procedures, as well as advantages and difficulties in the two countries' trade relations.
First Secretary of the South African Embassy in Vietnam Calvin Tshidavhu said his country is calling for investment in agriculture, footwear, services, banking, mining, steel production and the construction of transport infrastructure in which Vietnamese businesses have experiences.
Vietnam and South Africa has long-term friendship relations. The two countries' commercial relations have grown quickly in recent years. Bilateral trade increased from zero in 1992 to $140 million in 2004, of which Vietnam's exports to South Africa was nearly $60 million.
The Vietnam Agriculture and Rural Development Bank (Agribank) and the Bach Viet Media Co. Ltd. signed an agreement on comprehensive cooperation for the 2007-2010 period in Ho Chi Minh City on March 21.
The agreement between the largest bank and the top producer of compact disks in Vietnam was one of their efforts to become strategic partners in the future.
Under the agreement, Agribank will provide credits and guarantees with preferential interests to assist Bach Viet in expanding production and implementing investment projects. The bank will also assist Bach Viet in financial management.
In addition, Agribank will buy Bach Viet shares to become Bach Viet's strategic shareholder. It will also invest in Bach Viet's investment projects through establishing joint ventures and joint-stock companies. In return, Bach Viet will join with Agribank in several investment projects and buy Agribank's shares once the bank is equitised.
Agribank is now the leader in capital, property, the number of its workers, operational scale and the number of customers among banks in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Bach Viet is the biggest producer of CDs and VCDs in Vietnam and one of the biggest in Southeast Asia.
Speaking at a press briefing on Mar. 21, Deputy Construction Minister Tong Van Nga said that 216 units, including 20 joint-ventures and 41 foreign enterprises will participate in the exhibition.
At the exhibition, awards "Golden Cup for Trademark of the Vietnamese construction industry" and "Gold Medal for Product Quality" will be presented.
The Vietnam Hotel Prosits Company of Holland was licensed to invest $5 million to build a 15.1 ha Lang Moi Sa Pa ecotourism project, which will include a 1,500 sq.m. building, hotel rooms, an area for physio-therapy, and a swimming pool. The project will be permitted to operate for 49 years.
The second project, which has a duration of 50 years, will manufacture ore sorting machines at a cost of $1 million invested by the Tian Wen Ore Sorting Engineering Factory of China. It will cover 16,000-sq.m in the Bac Duyen Hai industrial zone in Lao Cai city.
The Agriculture and Rural Development Bank (Agribank) will fund $5.5 million to help small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) to expand production and business, said an official of the bank.
According to Agribank's Deputy General Director Kieu Trong Tuyen, the sum will be sourced from an is from an International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFDA) loan under a programme to help the poor improve their market accession. Agribank was entrusted by the Government to re-lend in accordance with a contract signed with the Finance Ministry on March 20.
Of the sum, $4.5 million will be channelled to household, micro and small-scaled businesses and the remaining $1 million will be invested in stocks of small and medium-sized enterprises in central Ha Tinh and southern Tra Vinh provinces.
This project increased the number of foreign-invested projects that Agribank has carried out to 101 with a combined capital of nearly $3.7 billion. Of the total capital, as much as $2.7 billion has been disbursed.
The French-invested Scavi Vietnam company is negotiating the purchase of Italy's DBA Europe Group who specialises in the manufacture of underwear, said officials from Scavi Vietnam.
The company' officials said once negotiations conclude, Scavi Vietnam will own famous trademarks such as Playtex, Wonderbra and Dim of DBA, which currently hold 15 percent of the market share in Europe. They also hope that the company will obtain annual revenues of $1 billion and an annual profit of $100 million.
The Southeast Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank Securities Company (Seabank) made its debut at the Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Centre on Mar. 20, becoming the 36th member at the stock exchange.
Seabank, with a statutory capital of VND50 billion , engages in securities brokerage, trading and issuance underwriting in addition to providing financial and securities investment consultancy and other financial services.
Vietnam Register (VR) and the Panamanian Isthmus Bureau of Shipping (IBS) signed in Hanoi on Mar. 29 an agreement on marine transport cooperation, under which Vietnam is enabled to check Panama's flag carriers operating in its territories and neighbouring countries.
VR Director Nguyen Van Ban said that a similar deal will be inked in Panama in April, allowing IBS to inspect ships which bear Vietnamese nationality and operate in Central and South America in accordance with international marine regulations.
The Vietnam Cement Corporation announced an increase in cement prices of VND20,000 ($0.63) a tonne, up 3 percent over the previous level, due to higher input costs for electricity, imported clinker, and transportation, said the deputy director of the corporation's marketing department, Nguyen Anh Thi.
The corporation would increase prices gradually to avoid causing negative effects on the market, he said, and would continue to cut production costs to enhance efficiency.
"The corporation will consider reasonable prices based on the purchasing power of different markets while still assuring healthy competition among cement enterprises," said corporation chairman Le Van Chung. "Prices will continue to be adjusted in the coming months." A reasonable price would be $55-60 a tonne, Chung said, but now it stands at only about $50 a tonne, he said.
Demand for cement nationwide was expected to increase 10.5 - 11.5 percent annually over the next five years and might reach 50 million tonnes per year by 2010, said a representative of the association at a seminar on Vietnam Cement Industry Development for 2006-10 held in Hanoi in January.
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