Category: Business

The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee and the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines on December 4 signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement for the 2023-2027 period to boost the city’s socio-economic development, particularly tourism.

The two sides will cooperate in promoting investment, commerce, tourism, and aviation; researching and developing tourism products and routes; and organising events on education, culture, sports and tourism.

Vietnam Airlines will also join in organising and supporting the city’s delegations at domestic and international events.

Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Phan Van Mai said that cooperation with Vietnam Airlines is among its measures to implement the city’s socio-economic development plan.

Chairman of the Vietnam Airlines’ Board of Directors Dang Ngoc Hoa said that Ho Chi Minh City is an important market for the carrier with about 60% of its flights departing from and landing in the city.

Currently, Vietnam Airlines is operating flights between Ho Chi
Minh City to 19 domestic and 26 international airports.

Hoa said he believes that the cooperation will contribute to supporting the city’s tourism to develop more strongly and create motivation for many other industries and fields./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnam and Cambodia have officially launched a bilateral cross-border QR payment link, allowing their peoples to scan QR codes to make payments in each other’s country using their local currency.

Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Nguyen Thi Hong and Governor of the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) Chea Serey chaired the launching ceremony in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province on December 3.

A press release from the NBC said that the new payment system aims to facilitate safe, convenient, secure, and affordable cross-border payments, promoting the use of local currencies.

It is expected to particularly benefit Cambodian and Vietnamese citizens, especially tourists and merchants, stated the press release.

It said that the effort follows a memorandum of understanding inked by the two central banks on November 8, 2022. After the signing, technical working groups from both sides met to discuss the modality of the linkage, agreeing to utilise a sponsorship model for the project.

The cross-border QR payme
nt system enables customers and the public to purchase goods and make payments in Khmer riel (KHR) in Vietnam, while allowing Vietnamese to use Vietnamese dong in Cambodia by scanning KHQR codes provided by approximately 1.8 million Cambodian merchants.

KHQR is a popular quick response (QR) code system created for retail payments in Cambodia. In 2022, the NBC launched the KHQR code payment service, aimed at promoting retail payments using mobile phones in Cambodia.

Along with Vietnam, Cambodia has also set up bilateral cross-border QR payment links with Thailand and Laos./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

With their beautiful designs and reasonable prices, Vietnamese products are dominating the Christmas market, and preferred by many domestic customers.

Faux Christmas trees, Santa’s sleigh, and reindeer, begin popping up and lighting up all over the capital city, particularly in such streets as Hang Luoc, Hang Ma and Luong Van Can which sell deco items.

Local firms have churned out various Christmas accessories like pine cones, Santa suits, snow princess dresses, and Christmas trees, whose prices are higher than those imported, but not too much.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc from Bac Tu Liem district said she prefers made-in-Vietnam products as they are hand-made, with diverse designs and affordable prices.

Apart from holiday deco items, the shops also offer Santa suit rentals to meet the increasing demand over the past years.

Experts suggested consumers select products of prestigious facilities, and pay more attention to their origin and quality to ensure that they are safe for their children./.

Source: Vietnam Ne
ws Agency

With their beautiful designs and reasonable prices, Vietnamese products are dominating the Christmas market, and preferred by many domestic customers.

Faux Christmas trees, Santa’s sleigh, and reindeer, begin popping up and lighting up all over the capital city, particularly in such streets as Hang Luoc, Hang Ma and Luong Van Can which sell deco items.

Local firms have churned out various Christmas accessories like pine cones, Santa suits, snow princess dresses, and Christmas trees, whose prices are higher than those imported, but not too much.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc from Bac Tu Liem district said she prefers made-in-Vietnam products as they are hand-made, with diverse designs and affordable prices.

Apart from holiday deco items, the shops also offer Santa suit rentals to meet the increasing demand over the past years.

Experts suggested consumers select products of prestigious facilities, and pay more attention to their origin and quality to ensure that they are safe for their children./.

Source: Vietnam Ne
ws Agency

A delegation from the Republic of Korea (RoK)’s Chungcheongnam province held talks and signed a cooperation agreement with authorities of the northern province of Bac Giang on December 5.

Speaking at the event, Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Le Anh Duong said the RoK now ranks first in terms of the number of projects and second in investment capital among 30 countries and territories investing in Bac Giang.

In particular, Bac Giang has the Vietnam-Korea Vocational College of Technology, which effectively contributes to the goal of developing a skilled workforce that meet the requirements of the local industrial sectors and Korean businesses in Vietnam.

At present, Bac Giang has 1,750 workers employed in the RoK, and nearly 1,200 Korean workers are working in the province. Cultural and economic exchanges between Bac Giang and the RoK are increasingly expanding.

The RoK is the second largest export-import market of Bac Giang, with bilateral trade turnover totalling 13.3 billion USD last year
, up 46.2% annually. In the first 11 months of this year, the figure reached around 14.8 billion USD, or 31.2% of the province’s total export-import turnover.

Bac Giang exported various goods to the RoK, including apparel, leather and footwear, computers, electronic products and components, phones and accessories, processed and fresh farm produce. It imported raw materials and accessories for apparel, leather and footwear, computers, electronic products and components, phones and accessories, machinery and equipment, processed and fresh farm produce from the RoK. The import turnover from the RoK accounted for 35.5% of the province’s total.

Governor of Chungcheongnam province Kim Tae-heum expressed his hope that diplomatic ties between the two localities will be further strengthened both in depth and width.

After the talks, the two sides signed a cooperation agreement on the regular exchange of delegations to share managerial experience, cultural exchanges to raise understanding of each other’s history and
culture, economic cooperation in industrial and agricultural development, and collaboration in the fields of health care, education, training, high-quality human resources and labour exchange, among others./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency

Vietnamese and Japanese experts exchanged views on solutions to foster cooperation in digital economy between the two countries at a forum in Hanoi on December 5.

The ‘Vietnam-Japan Policy Research Forum: Digital economy partnership under Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity: How should Japan and Vietnam cooperate?’ was held by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM) in coordination the Graduate School of Public Policy under the University of Tokyo, with the support of the Toshiba International Foundation.

Speaking at the event, Nguyen Anh Duong, Director of the CIEM’s Department for General Economic Issues and Integration Studies, highlighted Vietnam’s efforts in boosting digital economy and cooperation in this field.

Kazuo Kusakabe, Chief Representative of Hanoi Representative Office of Toshiba Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, pointed to substantial potential for the two countries to strengthen their collaboration in digital economy.

Vietnam and Japan issued a joint statement on the elevati
on of their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia and the world last month, which also mentioned enhancing cooperation in digital economy, he stressed.

Participants said Vietnam should work to raise its capacity for digital economy in combination with its partnerships in this regard. They also discussed changes in the Vietnam-Japan relations, and international trends and developments that affect economic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency