The magic revival of the karst

The magic revival of the karst

VietNamNet Bridge – More than 300 verdant 5-year-old yellow cypress have arisen in the karst, which is the most convincing proof showing that the precious thing of the limestone area has revived. Yellow cypress has clearly escaped from the risk of getting extinct and begun its recovery process.

This is the first time in the history of Vietnam’s flora conservation, a species classified as critically endangered in the world’s red book can see such a happy ending like that.

Going to mountain to see the precious trees

Crossing the Can Ty pass on the left bank of the Mien river to the Hang Tong Chong sky high mount is the itinerary that the group of Vietnamese scientists and four foreign scientists from the US, Russia, the UK and Australia followed the last decade to find out the precious yellow cypress.

“Follow me, if you want to see the yellow cypress with your eyes, you need to cross two mountains and then climb to that sky high mount,” Giang Minh Hai, a local resident told the reporters.

After four hours of walking and a lot of rests, could the reporters finally set their foot on the Hang Tong Chong mount. It was the midday, but high peak of 1000 meters was still dim in mist. The thing that reporters could see first was the trees, about 10 meters in height, arising in pride. In the fog, the yellow cypresses showed a wonderful beauty. On the barren, the trees still can arise, brimful of vitality, despite the sun, wind and storm. The green leaves of the tree wonderfully harmonize with the colors of other trees, which create the endemic precious flora of the limestone area.

Pointing to the biggest tree, Hai said: “Some years ago, someone wanted to chop down the tree, but my father and I prevented him”. There were the traces of the knife cutting on the tree, from which saplings have arisen.

Looking at the green saplings, a member of the exploration team said that this was for the first time after many years of searching, did he discover a young yellow cypress in the wild. This shows that the yellow cypress population here still has the fertility.

The green sprouts of hope

The plantation area of the Vietnam conifer conservation center is located just 100 meters below the Hang Tong Chong mount. The center brings the hope of reviving yellow cypress. On the area of one hectare, about 300 yellow cypress trees are being grown. Each of the trees, now four years old, is given a code, which allows to keep a close watch over the trees’ development process. According to Hai, sometimes he sees some scientists from cities to come to examine the development of the trees and grow new trees to replace the dead ones.

“Yellow cypress has surely escaped from the risk of getting extinct,” Director of the Bat Dai Son sanctuary Lenh Xuan Trung affirmed. Trung led the reporters to the sanctuary’s nursery garden, showing the 500 yellow cypress trees on the development.

He said that the trees are the result of the implementation of the project on preserving endangered pine trees in Vietnam initiated by the Center for Plant Conservation and FFI.

Since 2007, about 300 yellow cypress trees have been carried to the area. The plantation has been very satisfactory with nearly 100 percent young trees surviving. In Can Ty commune, 200 more trees have been successfully grown. The recovery plantation period of yellow cypress has begun.

According to the Bat Dai Son sanctuary, local residents take care for the trees and receive 3000 dong for every tree a year. It is the residents who can protect the yellow cypress population in the wild.

Thien Nhien

It’s difficult to drive FDI flow to the true tracks

It’s difficult to drive FDI flow to the true tracks

VietNamNet Bridge – The foreign direct investment (FDI) will automatically flow to the most profitable business fields. If Vietnam wants to drive the FDI flow to the addresses it wants, it has to apply reasonable policies and offer reasonable incentives.

The government of Vietnam has vowed to change the direction of the FDI flow to Vietnam, striving to attract high quality projects to the business fields that it prioritizes to develop instead of accepting any investment projects at any scale. However, experts have warned that this would be not an easy task.

FDI on the decrease?

The FDI registered capital unexpected dropped sharply in the first month of 2012: foreign investors only registered 25 projects capitalized at 29.5 million dollars in total. If counting on the 7.8 million dollars worth of additional capital, in January, Vietnam could only attract 37.3 million dollars worth of foreign invested projects, just equal to 3 percent of the same period of the last year.

The Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) believes that the figure did not truly reflect the FDI tendency. The long Tet holiday partially affected the licensing process. Meanwhile, some investors asked to delay the licensing day, because they would like to receive license in the Year of Dragon.

Phan Huu Thang, Director of the Foreign Investment Research Center, said that it’s still too early to come to a conclusion that the FDI is on the decrease if just considering the figure in January, but this should be seen as the warning about the necessity to apply reasonable policies to attract FDI.

Thang said that Vietnam now in the second FDI capital recession stage which began in 2009. The thing that Vietnam needs to do is to shorten the recession stage to kick off a new development period.

One of the biggest problems in attracting FDI is that Vietnam attracts many projects and big investment capital, but the disbursement rate is very slow. The amount of capital, registered but not disbursed has reached 108 billion dollars, while 13,000 projects have been going slowly, which has led to the waste of land, the breaking of development programs and many other social consequences.

It’s not the investors to blame on

As the ODA (official development assistance) capital has been decreasing, Vietnam is striving to attract more FDI, because the capital is really very important for a developing economy like Vietnam. 

Statistics show that ODA capital accounts for 28 percent of the total investment capital of the whole society.

However, experts say, Vietnam should not attract FDI at any costs, while it should welcome hi-tech projects and the projects in the business fields that Vietnam prioritizes to develop, and refuse the labor intensive projects and the projects in the manufacturing sector that cause the pollution to the environment.

However, the FDI capital has not been going the way Vietnam wants. In late 2011, President of Las Vegas Sands expressed his intention to pour six billion dollars to the two resort complexes in Vietnam. However, as the complexes are expected to contain casinos, the investor still has not received any official answer from the government of Vietnam.

Analysts have pointed out that the mammoth projects are usually in the fields of real estate, accommodation service and non-production sectors. Especially, very few investors want to inject their money in the fields Vietnam wants to invite them to, including agriculture, industrial processing and hi-tech branches.

Vo Tri Thanh, Deputy Head of the Central Institute for Economic Management CIEM, said that one should not blame on foreign investors for the high proportion of FDI projects in the real estate sector. In principle, investors will only pour money into profitable fields. If Vietnam wants to drive the FDI flow, it needs to offer reasonable policies.

Source: NLD

EVN in the reign of Dao Van Hung: time of power cuts

EVN in the reign of Dao Van Hung: time of power cuts

VietNamNet Bridge – Lacking power was the regular statement made by EVN, while cutting power was the regular thing made by the power group. 

EVN in the reign of President Dao Van Hung

Vietnam has been seriously lacking electricity since 2006. Power cuts were regularly made in many localities, especially in the dry and hot seasons, which caused big difficulties to people’s daily activities and big losses to the national economy.

Investments up, but power still lacking

In the years from 2007 to 2010, people felt worried every year, when the dry season came. Power cuts occurred right at the beginning of every dry season.

In the 2007’s dry season, from January 1 to May 31, 2007, Vietnam needed more than 28 billion KWh of electricity, but EVN could provide 27 billion KWh.

The electricity shortage became even more serious in the dry season of 2008. According to EVN, the needed daily average power output was 192 million KWh and the capacity of 11,200MW at peak hours. Meanwhile, the usable capacity was only 9600-9800MW.

In 2009, the northern provinces of Vietnam were only allowed to consume 48 million KWh per day, or it lacked 5-8 million KWh per day. In May and June, in the hot summer, the electricity provided to the north only met 70-80 percent of the demand, i.e. it lacked 9-10 million KWh per day.

In 2010, EVN promised that the rotating power cuts would only begin from early May. However, in fact, it began cutting power right at the beginning of March.

In the 27 provinces and cities in the north, except Hanoi, the electricity shortage reached 9-12 percent, or about 222-326 million KWh a month in the dry season, which was higher than the 3.2 percent shortage of the whole national power system. 

In the period, EVN only allocated 13,378 billion KWh of electricity it got from power generation sources, including from small hydropower plants to the Northern Electricity Corporation, only meeting 12.75 percent of the demand for growth in comparison with 2010.

In 2011, the serious electricity shortage was eased, just because of the economic difficulties, which led to the production scaling down, the profuse water supply for water reservoirs and the cool summer, which helped the demand for additional charge increase by less than 10 percent.

However, in early March, the power shortage occurred in many localities which then witnessed rotating power cuts.

Power cuts became oblivion

The regular power cuts caused big difficulties to people and big damages to the national economy. In 2007, Dak Lak province needed 1.8 million KWh a day, but the Dak Lak power company was told to provide 1.1 million KWh a day only. In the dry season, local residents saw the power cuts from 4 am to 10 pm in every two days.

At offices, workers had nothing to do except sitting and chatting until the office hours finished. The students’ study was seriously affected because of the lack of light, the inability to access Internet. A lot of traffic accident cases occurred on the streets in Buon Ma Thuot City because of the lack of electricity for the lighting system. 

In 2007-2010, residents in rural areas could not watch TV news in the evenings for months long. As the power was only provided at midnight, they had to do everything at midnight, from pumping water to cooking for the next day.

Enterprises complained that they lost billions of dong just because of the electricity cuts. In March 2011, the power cuts occurred in some industrial zones in Bac Ninh province. Some foreign invested enterprises in the Que Vo industrial zone complained that they saw the power cut six times within 28 hours.

Shim Wonhwan, General Director of Samsung Electronics Vietnam in Yen Phong industrial zone, even sent a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai to ask for help, because the power cuts made the production stagnant and caused big losses. The sudden power cuts caused a lot of troubles to the machines, and that badly affected the quality of products.

Meanwhile, steel mills complained that the losses caused by the power cuts may reach trillions of dong every year.

Tran Thuy

Domestic food processors strive to walk quicker

Domestic food processors strive to walk quicker

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese food processors have decided to make heavier investment in production in order to cement their positions on the domestic market.

La Hoai Nam, General Director of Hong Phu Food Company, said that his company is making steps in a plan to become one of the three leading fish sauce companies in Vietnam.

Hong Phu spent 25 million dollars to build a factory that makes fish sauce with a modern technology capable to put out 90 million liters per annum. And now is the time for Hong Phu to expand the market. It plans to organize the campaigns on bringing goods to rural areas to introduce directly to consumers, which would be followed by the establishment of sales agents in the localities.

“I believe that this is the right way to develop the sale network and satisfy the customers’ demand,” Nam said.

Saigon Food still plans to increase the sales, even though it has been warned that the demand in 2012 would be even lower than that of the last year. 

Le Thi Thanh Lam, Deputy General Director of the company, said that the purchasing power in 2012 is not likely to increase, as the laborers’ incomes do not change. Therefore, Saigon Food plans to develop new products which fit the consumers’ pockets. Besides, it strives to expand the market by targeting restaurants, hotels and cafés.

Saigon Food is considering distributing goods through small food shops where they set up refrigerators instead of selling goods only at supermarkets.

A businessman, who asked to be not named, has said that he plans to set up a supermarket that specializes in providing Vietnamese rice products, both wholesale and retail. He has estimated that by the end of 2011, the market had had 100 different rice brands. Therefore, his supermarket would help consumers buy high quality rice at reasonable prices; while it would help rice producers sell products for better prices.

Analysts have noted that Vietnamese goods have become the bigger choice of Vietnamese consumers recently. Up to 80 percent of products on the shelves of Co-opmart, Maximark, Big C or Citimart are Vietnam made products, while 98 percent of processed foods are made in Vietnam.

Bibica, a sweets company, said that it has completed the survey on the taste and the consumption psychology, a necessary step it needs to do when drawing up the business plan for the high-inflation period.

According to Phan Van Thien, Deputy General Director of Bibica, there are two different groups of consumers. High income earners would spend money on high grade products, no matter how high the prices are. Meanwhile, low income earners would consider the products very carefully before buying, from the design to the quality.

“The analyst has led to our decision to spend 200 billion dong in 2012 to design new products which can satisfy both the groups of consumers,” he said.

After increasing the capacity by two folds to make 150 tons of jam products, Pham Ngoc Thuy, the owner of Thanh Long workshop, said that she is considering spending money on a production line that makes dried sugar-soaked fruits.

“Vietnamese consumers and distributors are choosing made in Vietnam products. This should be seen as a great opportunity which must not be missed out,” Thuy said. “If we still keep hesitating, we would feel regret later.”

Hoang Thi Tam Ai, Director of Tri Duc Food Company, said that the company has spent billions of dong more to set up a factory in Cu Chi district which would process food from fruits and vegetables to make soft drinks or materials for daily meals. The factory is expected to become operational from mid 2012, raising the production capacity of the company by two folds.

Source: SGTT

Manufacturers getting along to try to consume inventory

Manufacturers getting along to try to consume inventory

VietNamNet Bridge – The low consumption demand and the big inventory volumes are the two biggest problems manufacturers are facing which make them worried stiff. 

At Metro Binh Phu, there was no queue at noon of February 11. All buyers could make payment immediately, even though only some counters operated. There were not many visitors inside. The same situation could be seen at traditional markets in HCM City, including Tan Binh, Hoang Hoa Tham and Tan Dinh.

Purchasing power decreases

Ngo Van Hai, Director of Citimart chain, has noted that the demand is very low. “The number of buyers has decreased by 20 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year,” Hai said.

Mai Ngoc, the owner of a children’s toy shop on Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street in district 5 of HCM City, said that in previous years, the sales after Tet holiday were relatively high with the revenue of 30-40 million dong per day. Meanwhile, the sales have been going very slowly so far with the modest turnover of 15 million dong per day. 

Nguyen Huu Toan, Director of Sanding Fashion Center, the sales have dropped by 30 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year.

A lot of home appliance centers in HCM City have opened again since January 30, but the salesmen have been sitting idle since then, because of very few buyers. Mobile phone distributors gather meetings every day to discuss the solutions to boost sales. However, the situation has not been improved.

According to Dinh Anh Huan, Business Director of The Gioi Di Dong, the average sales of the supermarkets of the same chain in HCM City, the strategic market of the distributor, are just 100 million dong per supermarket per day.

“In previous years, the sales were very high on the first days of the new lunar year. We could get 140 million dong a day,” he said.

HomeOne, a home appliance center in Go Vap district of HCM City, has been quiet from the morning to the afternoon; and on weekends as well. The nearby Nguyen Kim and Thien Hoa supermarkets seem to be more crowded, but most of the visitors go there just for window shopping. Very few people buy valuable things such as LCD TVs, refrigerators and air conditioners.

Computer supermarkets including Phong Vu, Hoan Long, Bach Khoa are facing the same problem.
Goods left unsold since Tet

The low demand has led to the big inventory volume. Especially, food distributors have been put on tenterhooks because of the high inventory volume, which has been left unsold since Tet. 

A pork distributor has revealed that though the chain has slashed the sale price by 10,000 dong per kilo, the sale of pork has been left unsold.

Another food distributor has revealed that a big volume of poultry meat is still being kept at the company’s storehouse. The poultries were slaughtered before Tet for Tet sale, but they have not been sold out.

This explains why farmers have raised the sale prices of chicken, but the retail prices at supermarkets remain unchanged. Especially, on February 11-19, at Vinatextmart and Maximark, buyers can enjoy the price discount of 10 percent when buying leg of pork.

Hai said that the unsold products are mostly sweets, chocolate, canned tea, processed food. Manufacturers would take back sweets and chocolate to sell on Valentine Day or Women’s Day. Meanwhile, other products need to be sold as soon as possible. In some cases, the unsold products would be used as associated gifts for buyers.

Lacking cash and having big inventory volume, a mobile phone distributor has reportedly joined forces with mobile network operators to sell products at low price of 400,000 dong to workers in the Long An industrial zone.

Source: SGTT