Vietnam Industrial Parks InfoGate ! Industrial Zones ! Export Processing Zones ! Business in brief in 23 October 2012

An independent jewelry appraisal company will be established in early 2013 by the Vietnam Gold Business Association and some of its members in a bid to control the quality of materials for jewelry production. The association is going through necessary procedures for establishing the company and seeking a location for its headquarters. In addition, testing machines are being imported. "A number of foreign companies are offering us machines, but we have not made the final decision,” said Nguyen Thanh Long, chairman of the gold association. The company will test jewelry products and grant eligible goods seals of quality. The company will mainly serve member companies of the gold association, but will also provide a service to other firms in need.

Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) has invited travel firms, hotels and local tourism authorities to join a promotion trip to Russia on the occasion of the Moscow International Travel & Tourism Exhibition in early 2013. The invitation was sent out right after promotion activities in Russia on the occasion of the tourism fair Leisure 2012 wrapped up. Russia, along with South Korea and Japan, is one of the major markets for tourism promotion, according to VNAT. Especially, Russia is a potential market with a large number of high-spending tourists and a great demand for tourism. Apart from the activities at the coming expo, VNAT is preparing several other events for this market in 2013. Vietnam welcomed over 100,000 Russian tourist arrivals last year. The tourism authority expects to triple this figure by 2014.

The Sri Lanka-Vietnam Business Council made its debut late last week in Sri Lanka. The council aims to promote and expand economic co-operation between the two countries, especially in the field of trade, investment and tourism. Two-way trade turnover between the two sides reached US$113.2 million last year and is expected to be $150 million this year.

Sixteen Vietnamese businesses showed their products at the International Food and Beverage Fair which got under way in Paris on Sunday. The biennial fair, known as SIAL Paris, is one of the biggest of its kind in the world, attracting 6000 businesses from 200 countries. It will end on Thursday. Vu Thanh, from the Agriculture Trade Promotion Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said firms are also learning about the French and European Union markets and co-operation and investment opportunities.

The second annual conference on tourism property investment and management in Vietnam will take place in HCM City on December 15. Attendees will review tourism property investment for this year and discuss the restructuring of hotel and resort projects in this economically difficult period. Experts and consultants in the property sector will also suggest ways investors and enterprises can become more efficient with regards to the building and management of hotels, service apartments, villas and resorts.

The American city of Houston is an attractive destination for Vietnamese enterprises to seek business and investment opportunities, businesspeople heard yesterday at a workshop in Ha Noi. The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry held the workshop with the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP) to discuss trade opportunities and potential co-operation with Houston in fields the city is strong such as chemical industry, energy, aviation, biological technology, construction, health care, and logistics. Houston - with a business-friendly environment, low cost of living, a sophisticated transportation system, and developed health care and education services - would bring a lot of advantages to Vietnamese enterprises considering investments in the city, according to GHP.

The Trung Son Hydropower Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), yesterday signed a deal worth close to VND3 trillion (US$150 million) with a joint venture company to build and equip the Trung Son Hydropower Plant. The joint venture is formed between Samsung C&T Corporation and Construction Company 47. The total cost of the project is VND7.7 trillion ($410 million),with VND6.2 trillion ($295.2 million) being provided by the World Bank (WB), accounting for 80 per cent of the value. The remaining money has been invested by the Trung Son Hydropower Company Limited. Located on the Ma River in the Quan Hoa District o central Thanh Hoa Province, the plant – with its eventual capacity of 260MW – is expected to provide 1.55 billion kWh to the national power grid every year.

PepsiCo said Japanese beverage company Suntory Holdings Ltd will acquire a 51 percent equity stake in the company’s beverage business in Vietnam. Suntory and PepsiCo will hold key roles in the management of the new joint venture, in which the U.S. beverage company will hold the remaining 49 percent stake. PepsiCo said it would retain marketing and innovation responsibilities for its beverages, and continue to independently operate its food business in Vietnam. PepsiCo and Suntory have worked together in the United States, Japan and New Zealand, according to a press statement.

Vietnam has surpassed other large exporters like Indonesia, China and Paraguay to hold a 48.3 percent share of the Brazilian footwear market. It has emerged as the largest supplier of footwear products to this South American nation, with export revenues hitting US$221.3 million in the first nine months of 2012, a year-on-year increase of 48.8 percent, according to the Vietnam Trade Office in Brazil. Trade turnover between the two countries reached more than US$1.3 billion in the past three quarters of this year, up 24.1 percent over last year’s figure. Vietnamese exports have already earned US$597.2 million, filling 87.7 percent of the year’s set target. Vietnam ships mostly footwear, seafood, computers, electronics, spare parts, transport vehicles, garments and textiles, and steel and rubber products to Brazil. It imports animal feed, tobacco, machinery, automobile accessories, chemicals, timber products, and raw materials for the garment sector.

Vietnam Electricity Group said Tuesday it awarded a 2.96 trillion dong ($140.9 million) contract to Samsung C&T Corp. and a Vietnamese company to build a hydropower plant in northern Vietnam. Under an engineering, procurement and construction contract signed in Hanoi on Monday, the consortium will build the Trung Son plant in Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam Electricity Group, known as EVN, said in a statement. Construction of the 260-megawatt plant is scheduled to begin in November and be completed by 2017, the company said.

Ho Chi Minh City’s consumer price index (CPI) in October increased 0.4 percent compared to September. According to the city’s statistics office, the index was 3.8 percent higher than in January and 4.86 percent more than the same period last year. Prices of housing, electricity, water, and fuel saw the sharpest increase of 1.46 percent, followed by goods and other services, (1.02 percent), and garments, hats and footwear (0.58 percent). Post and telecommunications enjoyed a slight rise of only 0.03 percent. Household appliances and cultural and tourism services saw decreases of .044 and 0.02 percent, respectively. Gold prices were up 5.9 percent, while the VND-USD exchange rate was down 0.22 percent.

Eleven countries have got permission to export vegetables and fruit to Vietnam, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). They are the US, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Thailand, the Republic of Korea (RoK), Chile, Cambodia, South Africa, and India. Two other countries, namely Laos and China, are temporarily allowed to export vegetables and fruit to the Vietnamese market till the end of this year. The MARD has asked foreign exporters to strictly follow Vietnamese regulations on product quality to ensure food hygiene and safety for local consumers.

Registering sustained growth over much of the past five years, Vietnam’s footwear industry is one of the country’s leading export earners, trailing only textiles, crude oil and electronics. Annual foreign sales as of 2011 have exceeded $6.5 billion, the highest in a half-decade. A crucial factor driving overseas revenue growth is the prevalent view of Vietnam being a viable alternative hub for subcontracted production in the Asia-Pacific region. A number of these clients are prominent brands that have established factories in the country. These include adidas, Nike and Converse. Rising overseas sales have also been augmented by the removal of EU-imposed anti-dumping tariffs on footwear made in Vietnam. With the rule lifted, Vietnam’s footwear exports in 2011 reached $6.5 billion, which was 27 percent higher than the previous year. In 2011, the International Trade Centre ranked Vietnam as the third-largest footwear exporter in the world, representing 7 percent of global turnover.

Jollibee Foods Corp. may source its raw materials from neighboring countries once tariff barriers have been eliminated through a regional integration. Chicken, which Jollibee currently buys from the Philippines and the US, may be sourced from Thailand if tariff walls have been brought down as part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) integration, Ysmael V. Baysa, Jollibee’s chief financial officer, said. Moreover, the food firm may opt to get its rice supply from Vietnam and Thailand instead of buying locally and import pork from the US and Vietnam instead of tapping local producers, Baysa said. Bringing down the tariff barriers in the region will make importing raw materials less costly than tapping local producers. Hence, Baysa said the lower cost of raw materials will result in lower prices for Jollibee’s end-products for consumers in the Philippines.