Economy and commerce

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will revise down its GDP growth forecast for Thailand to lower than 2.9% this year following the country’s slower-than-expected performance in the first half.  However, the new growth forecast, due to be announced on 22 September, will be higher than 2.5%, ...

Scoring only 18 out of 100 on an open budget index compiled by the International Budget Partnership, Vietnam’s budget transparency is deemed “scant” and far below the world average score of 45.   The performance is slightly worse than that of 2012, when the country scored 19, according ...

Vietnam’s financial market holds promising potential and the basic foundations to develop derivative products, financial experts told a seminar held by the Hong Kong-based Asia Risk magazine in Singapore on 9 September. Keep reading ...

Since its founding, the inhabitants of Can Tho city have sold their wares atop the water, which has become a tourist spectacle. This has been the way of life for as long as any resident here can remember, but things are changing. In recent years, local communities ...

Tourism officials from Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar discussed solutions for luring tourists to their region and integrate their tourist industry as they met in Ho Chi Minh City on 9 September. The five countries are member of a political, economic, and cultural bloc known ...

Loan guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) are expected to surge 67% to 10 billion baht a month in the wake of the new credit guarantee portfolio scheme by Thailand’s state-owned Credit Guarantee Corporation. Keep reading ...

Vietnam and the Mekong region’s largest travel exhibition – the International Travel Expo Ho Chi Minh City (ITE HCMC 2015) – will be held from 10 to 12 September at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the People’s Committee of Ho ...

Representatives from about 70 Vietnamese and Egyptian enterprises shared information on business opportunities at a forum in Cairo on 7 September. Keep reading ...

It has been two months since Vietnam started waiving visa for tourists from Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain.   But Ung Phuong Dung, director of Indochina Services Travel Group, told Saigon Times Online that around half of her clients from these five European countries still ...

The Ministry of Finance plans to forgo fines imposed on businesses which were behind their tax due date if their partners, including state agencies, had failed to pay them on time in accordance with contract terms. Keep reading ...