Cbre vietnam report

The bank says caution is needed despite the sector making an important contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In its regular June report, the HSBC notes that property prices, especially in the luxury segment in Vietnam’s big cities, have increased over the past two years.

Last year, prices of luxury apartments climbed up 9 percent year-on-year, while those in the affordable and mid-end segments rose 4-5 percent.

The market share of high-end and luxury segments, meanwhile, surged to over 70 percent in 2020 from below 30 percent in 2019.

Although foreign direct investment in Vietnam’s real estate market in May soared by over 200 percent against the same period last year, most of the capital was still focused on production. The HSBC deduced that property prices rose mainly due to domestic investors.

As it had happened in many other nations, this was the result of loosened monetary policies that created favorable conditions for lowering interest rates and increasing liquidity.

Credit growth in the Vietnamese property sector rose 15 percent in January and February over the same period last year, surpassing the target of 12 percent set by the State Bank of Vietnam, the country’s central bank. As of mid-April, the credit growth stood at more than 15 percent.

In mid-April, the central bank called on commercial banks to strengthen risk control, announcing that it would tighten control over credit for sectors with potential risks, including the property sector.

According to the HSBC report, the central bank can take stricter control measures if needed. It said watchdogs should strike a balance between strict control measures and limiting credits for property, on the one hand, while minimizing imminent risks posed by Covid-19 to the sector, on the other.

It noted that the property sector was making bigger contributions to Vietnam’s GDP at some 8 percent.

Higher property prices would prevent the central bank from further slashing interest rates, the report said.

The report assumed that local authorities were worried the property market could be no longer an essential factor of the economy, so the fact that it was being closely monitored was an encouraging sign.

Vietnam is rolling out policies to improve FDI mobilisation

After the meeting with the task force for foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction in late-May, last week, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh, head of the task force, urged all ministries and agencies to provide more general advice and policies to lure in more investors and strengthen investment promotion activities.

Of these, the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) is the focal agency in the building of Vietnam’s FDI mobilisation strategy by 2030 to be submitted to the prime minister this month. The ministry will also be forwarded all reports and recommendations related to enterprises’ difficulties and challenges sent to relevant authorities.

Based on initial feedback, tax and related issues remain a headache for investors. The deputy PM asked the Ministry of Finance to provide measures as soon as possible to remove challenges related to withholding tax (especially foreign contractor withholding tax), the conflicts of legal provisions on taxes as well as export, and import tariffs.

Meanwhile, DPM Minh asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade and relevant ministries to consider off-shore wind power projects and consider adding a new form of energy (hydrogen) to the master plan.

The Ministry of Labours, Invalids, and Social Affairs will have to make more efforts to urgently resolve all issues related to granting and extending work permits for experts working for foreign-invested enterprises; as well as accelerate the training of workers to meet the needs of large corporations for skilled, technical, and management workers in line with Industry 4.0 trends.

The efforts of the task force and the local governments have proven effective so far. A few weeks ago, Binh Duong People’s Committee handed over investment certificates to five foreign-invested companies valued at $1 billion in the midst of the fourth COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam.

Of these, Polytex Far Eastern Vietnam (from Taiwan) had the largest capitalisation with a total investment of $600 million, followed by Cheng Loong (also from Taiwan) pouring an additional $100 million into its $1 billion local project, and Singapore’s New Motion Industrial Co., Ltd. registered a new $184 million project. This has pulled Binh Duong to the fourth position among 56 cities and provinces receiving FDI in the first five months of 2021, with the total investment of $1.1 billion.

Meanwhile, the task force has also boosted cooperation with numerous new billion-dollar projects in the first months, clinching deals like the LNG power plant in Long An and O Mon II thermal power plant in Can Tho, while encouraging others to expand.

Regent Garment Factory Ltd., a subsidiary of Crystal International Group Ltd., was approved in May to build another factory in Hai Duong with the value of $35 million. This is the fourth factory of the company which has so far registered the total investment of around $227 million in the country.

The total investment in the first five months saw a slight increase on-year to nearly $14 billion. Moreover, the average scale of newly- and additionally-registered projects has risen significantly since last year, from $2.2 million to $14.4 million, and from $7.9 million to $11.3 million per project this year.

By Nguyen Huong

Notice says the HCM City’s Hospital for Tropical Diseases is stopping people from visiting patients after confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported there. — VNA/VNS Photo Thu Hương

HÀ NỘI — A further 423 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Việt Nam on Wednesday, comprising 414 domestic and nine imported ones, according to the Ministry of Health.

Of the locally transmitted infections, Bắc Giang logged 279 cases, HCM City 99, Bắc Ninh 27, Hà Tĩnh four, Nghệ An three, Hà Nam one and Bắc Kạn one.

With 414 domestic cases, Wednesday saw the second highest daily increase. May 25 with 444 cases remains the day with the highest number of new locally-transmitted cases since April 27, marking the fourth wave of COVID-19 in Việt Nam.

The number of confirmed cases in HCM City in the fourth wave on Wednesday topped 1,000, after the city recorded 99 cases today, the highest number since the pandemic began earlier last year

Deputy Minister of Health Nguyễn Trường Sơn, who is leading the ministry’s special task force to support HCM City in COVID-19 prevention and control on Wednesday dismissed information that the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the city is due to a new variant of coronavirus.

Sơn said that the ministry verified with HCM City’s Pasteur Institute and could confirm that cases in the city were infected with the Indian B.1617.2 variant, also known as the Delta variant, according to the results of genetic sequencing for samples taken from COVID-19 patients in the city.

The health ministry today also worked with Việt Nam Vaccine Company to take the 288,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine the manufacturer delivered on May 25, 2021, to be distributed to outbreak hotspots in the country.

Of the 45 locally-transmitted cases reported in HCM City on Wednesday evening, 12 cases have not had sources of infection identified while the other five cases related to the church cluster and two related to HCM City Hospital for Tropical Diseases and 26 cases are F1 of earlier confirmed cases.

Of the locally transmitted cases on Wednesday, 398 cases were detected in quarantine sites or sealed-off areas.

The national tally reached 11,635, including 9,980 local cases and 1,655 imported cases. The number of COVID-19 cases since April 27, when the latest outbreak began, amounted to 8,410.

There were 4,590 recoveries as 47 COVID-19 patients were given the all-clear on Wednesday while the death toll remained at 61.

Twenty-four provinces have gone through 14 consecutive days without new cases. — VNS

The hamlet, located in An Giang Province’s An Phu District, has got an unsurprising nickname: the “Twins Hamlet.”

Pham Ngoc Liep, who has two twin grandchildren in the hamlet, said: “Almost every household here has a pair of twins. Come to think of it, it’s a bit unusual.”

The hamlet has 17 pairs of twins who have rhyming names, including a pair called An Phu and An Giang, named after the district and province, and another called Lu and Lut ( lu lut means heavy flood in Vietnamese) since the twins were born during a historical flood that struck the region in 2000.

Kim Ly and Kim Yen are named after two big gold shops in the Chau Doc Town in the hope that the two girls will grow up and own gold shops one day.

The first twins are 80 years old – Bay Nghi and her younger brother Tam Nghia; and the youngest twins, Ngoc Nhu and Ngoc Y, are 8 years old. The remaining twins include those in the 40s and those born between 2000 and 2013.

Loi Pham and Loc Pham, sons of Cao Thi Diem and Pham No Han, play games with each other. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Tai.

Cao Thi Diem, 39-year-old mother of 9-year-old twin boys, said that she and her husband had no plans to have many children since they are laborers and often struggle to make ends meet. After having a boy and a girl, they wanted another daughter and then stop having kids.

“I got pregnant again when my second child was only 10 months old. So I asked him whether to keep the baby or not. He said I should keep the child, adding that we should be responsible for making the baby,” she said.

She could not afford an ultrasound, but an accident, when she was hit by a car, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The person responsible for the accident paid for an ultrasound and she learned that she was pregnant with twins. She gave birth to two beautiful boys.

Even though she had to raise four small children, Diem did not take any “maternal leave” and kept working while her husband Pham No Han worked as a hired laborer from dawn to dusk everyday without a break.

But the couple broke their “plan” and went on to have another daughter and are now raising five children.

The lily connection

“No one can explain why this stretch of road has many twins. Locals assume that this phenomenon was caused by eating water lilies harvested from a nearby lake. About 10 years ago, the lake was drained and converted into farming land. After that, the hamlet stopped recording twins,” Diem said.

Some locals also believe that having twins is determined by genetics. No Han, for instance, has younger twin brothers – Phan Van Chien and Phan Van Thang. They are 32 years old now. After getting married in 2008, Chien’s wife gave birth to two identical girls, before Han and his wife had their pair.

However, most of the remaining families with twins are not related, so the genetics argument was not widely accepted. It also appears that no social or biological scientist has studied the unusual phenomenon.

While the hamlet’s residents do not have a solid explanation, the families with twins are happy to have them.

Ta Thi Thu Thuy, 43, mother of three daughters including a pair of twins, continues to cuddle, hug and kisses all of them. “It took a lot of hard work for me to raise them this big,” she said. Sometimes, looking from behind at the twins, Thuy often gets their names mixed.

Furthermore, instead of feeling the burden of having to nurture and educate three children, the couple are so pleased that they are growing up into hard working and bright students that they are eager to have even more children.

Twin sisters Kim Ngan and Kim Ha study at home. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Tai.

“I will have more kids if I know for sure that I will have another pair of twins. Since that is not certain, we decided to stop,” said another father of two twin sisters, smiling.

After hearing of the hamlet with many twins, people from other localities have flocked to the place to “learn the experience.”

Catch the man

While mothers having twins just laugh and say, “It’s God’s blessing,” some of the husbands humorously assert it is their doing.

Since most of the married women here are from another commune, “If you want to have twins, get married to men in this hamlet”, joked the father of a pair of twins.

Ha Thi Huyen Giao, a doctor at Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Tam Tri Dong Thap General Hospital, said the rate of having twins in the world is currently about 1-1.5 percent, double that of 40 years ago.

In the past, Vietnam had a lower rate of twins than the world, but now it is not much different due to people having access to and success in infertility treatment.

The cause of have so many natural twins in the hamlet has not been identified by researchers, but having twins depends on factors such as age of pregnant woman, number of births given and other factors. For instance, some factors such as skin color, ethnicity and living environment have been reported to increase the likelihood of twins, but this is not a common occurrence.

According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the chance of having twins via genetics from the maternal side is 1.66 percent, while the figure for men is only 0.8 percent.

Twins can be inherited by skipping a generation, with grandparents have twins, parents having normal births and their offspring having twins.

Le Thi Bich Thuy, chairwoman of Phuoc Hung Commune People’s Committee, said that all 17 cases of twins in Phuoc Khanh Hamlet were born to women who became pregnant naturally.

She said no one knows until now why the hamlet has so many twins. “The senior citizens here all say they didn’t follow any special diet or pray for twins.”