Double act
Vietnamese like to get together and whenever they do there is beer on the table. This may explain the interest in the equitizations of the country’s two biggest beer producers. The Saigon Beer Alcohol and Beverage Corp. (Sabeco) in the south and the Hanoi Beer Alcohol and Beverage Corp. (Habeco) in the north have been set for equitization in 2016 or 2017 and both are now listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, where their shares are shooting upwards. Vietnam, where beer sales are forecast to expand at an annual rate of 7.2 per cent by 2020, will see its burgeoning middle class triple to 33 million over the next four years. Beer consumption in 2016 was forecast to rise 4.1 per cent to 4 billion liters from 2015; the highest in ASEAN, according to Euromonitor International.
