News
Vietnam state firms sit on mountain of foreign debt
A new report from the Vietnam government says power monopoly Electricity of Vietnam tops the list of entities with foreign debts with debts of VND162 trillion (US$7.2 billion) as of the end of 2014. Vietnam last year signed 41 agreements for $4.7 billion worth of official development ...
Vietnam falls short on forestry protection plan
Vietnam is facing a critical reduction in forest areas five years after it implemented the national forest protection and development programme, forest authority officials said. Deputy Director of Viet Nam Forestry Administration, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Nguyen Ba Ngai said nearly 1.2 million ...
More Montagnards opt to return home
More Montagnard asylum seekers are planning to return to home amid cuts in United Nations-provided food rations. Vivian Tan, regional spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said more than 10 indigenous Christian Montagnards had requested assistance in returning to Vietnam. She said the group had decided ...
Party General Secretary advocates close defence ties with Cambodia
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong urged Vietnam and Cambodia’s defence ministries to strengthen their co-operation at a reception on 12 December for Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Tea Banh. Keep reading ...
Vietnam shipyard launches $230m oil rig
PetroVietnam Marine Shipyard JSC in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, a subsidiary of PetroVietnam, launched a US$230-million jackup rig 13 December. Tam Dao 05 weighs 18,000 tons and can drill to a depth of nine kilometers. Keep reading ...
Vietnam will face severe water shortage for treating rivers badly: experts
Vietnam is using its major rivers as dumping grounds or excavation sites, and this poses a risk of severe water shortage for tens of millions of people in the near future, experts warn. Members of Vietnam Rivers Network (VNR), the country’s largest advocacy group for water ...
Packed cities, empty villages: Vietnam's migration dilemma
When Vu Thi Linh moved her family from their spacious rural home to a tiny rented room in Hanoi, she hoped her children would be able to get the education she never had. The Linhs are among hundreds of thousands of people moving to Vietnam’s bulging ...
Northwest residents struggle to escape from prolonged poverty
The level of poverty in the northwest region of Vietnam is 2.7 times higher than in the rest of the country. This was announced at a conference on 10 December to discuss rapid and sustainable poverty reduction measures in the six northwest provinces of Ha Giang, Cao ...
National Assembly stands firm on timber tax
Valuable woods are not subject to a resource tax decrease for fears it might unintentionally trigger worsening deforestation, voted the National Assembly’s Standing Committee (NASC) on 10 December. The debate on wood taxes was sparked as the NASC weighed in on the draft of the amended ...
Regional deal to tackle drugs
Senior officials from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia on 10 December signed a joint statement on drug control co-operation, vowing to make the ASEAN bloc drug-free at the 15th Trilateral and Bilateral Ministerial Meeting of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos on Drug Control Co-operation. The joint statement was inked ...
