Migrants at border today

Thoughts return to stronger rail options. Source: freepik.com

Although the Ever Given container ship was rescued one week after being stranded in the Suez Canal in Egypt, the trading world remains rocked as hundreds of billions of US dollars has evaporated in the wake of the global trade system significantly relying on this narrow canal.

The incident has also posed questions on developing other transportation channels, in which trans-continental rail routes may be top of the list.

“One of the most effective channels is to develop a rail route running through Asia and Europe. This would be very good for exporters in Vietnam,” said Tran Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Agency of Foreign Trade.

It is now recommended that exporters should consider and take advantage of the current rail route connecting Vietnam through China to Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Germany. From Germany, the goods can be transported to other European markets.

Currently if goods are transported via this rail route, it would take a month from Vietnam to Germany, with a cost of $8,000-9,000 per container, which is higher than the $6,000-8,000 for sea transportation which can take up to 50 days.

However, the existing difficulty is the difference in railway widths and also standards of the trains themselves. The width of Vietnam’s railways is one metre, while that of other nations is around 1.4m. Moreover, trains in Vietnam cannot accommodate a huge volume of goods at the same time – each train can carry a maximum of 90 tonnes of goods for 15 compartments. If exporters want their goods transported by trains from Vietnam to overseas markets, they will have to change trains many times, meaning higher costs.

These factors currently make it difficult for Vietnam to boost the transportation of goods by train to other international markets.

Kazakhstani Ambassador to Vietnam Yerlan Baizhanov previously told VIR that Kazakhstan, China, and Vietnam had established a council to discuss a project to develop a rail route for goods transportation from Vietnam through China to Kazakhstan and other member countries of the Vietnam-Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), including Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, and vice versa.

“The council has organised a number of meetings. One of the key issues now is to fix the cost for transporting goods,” Baizhanov said. “I believe that there will be a shared solution. If this rail route is not developed, it will be difficult to raise the bilateral trade between Kazakhstan and Vietnam, which currently sits at only $500 million per year.”

The railway will help reduce the time for transporting goods from Kazakhstan to Vietnam to only 14 days from about one or two months now, he added. “The Kazakhstani side will continue working with Vietnam’s authorised agencies about this project,” said Baizhanov.

Currently, goods are transported between both nations by sea, which often takes a few months for a ship.

Under the railway project, whose total length and investment capital remain unrevealed, container goods will be transported from Vietnam’s northern Dong Dang and Lao Cai railway stations to China’s Lianyungang port – whose 49 per cent of stake is now held by Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), the national railway company of Kazakhstan. After that, the goods will be transported by railway to Kazakhstan, which borders China, and to other EAEU countries.

Leaders of the railway industry of Vietnam, Kazakhstan, and China have decided on the project’s logistics manager, namely KTZExpress of Kazakhstan and Vietnam’s Transportation and Trade JSC, a member unit of state-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation. They have also considered the demand for organising container-based trains for the new routes. KTZ and Vietnam Railways Corporation also inked an MoU on cooperation in railway development several years ago.

Currently, under its strategy, Kazakhstan is boosting transport infrastructure modernisation and attaching great importance to developing transport-logistics routes connecting Kazakhstan with Southeast Asian nations including Vietnam. The railway will also enable Kazakhstan to boost imports of electronics, and garments and textiles products from Vietnam, which it needs the most.

In the same vein, in 2018, members of the Organization for Cooperation of Railways (OSJD) discussed a plan to develop a railway transport system running from Vietnam to Russia through other Asian and European countries. The plan is part of an agreement signed that year at the OSJD’s conference of general directors in the central city of Danang. Directors pledged to promote logistics development through rail, expand research cooperation, and supply locomotives and machinery. However, no further information of the plan has been published so far.

HCM City (VNS/VNA) – Although average life expectancy has increased, the number of cases of non-infectious disease among Vietnamese has risen, said Dr Nguyen Thi Kim Tien , head of the Department of Health Protection and Care of Central Officials.

Tien spoke at an annual national workshop on health and longevity held in Ho Chi Minh City on April 8.

The average life expectancy of Vietnamese is 73.6 compared to 68.6 in 1999, according to the population census in 2019. However, Vietnamese women are ill an average of a total of 11 years, compared to eight years for men, she said.

“Non-infectious chronic diseases are the number one killer today, with more than 70 percent of deaths coming from cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes,” she noted.

The number of cases increase significantly from the age of 40 due to aging, inadequate nutrition, high consumption of tobacco and alcohol, stress, and other factors.

“The number in Vietnam has reached alarming levels,” she said, adding that “how we age depends hugely on how we behave.”

She said that people should carefully watch what they eat, be physically active, avoid the use of tobacco and alcohol, and lower stress levels.

“You should listen to your body and see a doctor as soon as possible if ill because early detection is important in treatment, reducing mortality and improving quality of life,” she said.

Aging population

In 2011, Vietnam began to enter the period of an aging population and is one of the countries with the fastest aging rates in the world.

In 2017, the number of people 60 years and older accounted for 11.9 percent of the total population.

This group will account for about 21 million people by 2038, or 20 percent of the population. The number will reach 27 million or 25 percent of the population by 2050, according to the General Statistics Office.

The average life expectancy of Vietnamese is 1.6 years higher than the world average, but the population is about 16 years older than the world population.

Dr. Le Dinh Thanh, Director of HCM City-based Thong Nhat Hospital, said the rapid aging of the population poses huge challenges to a low to middle-income country like Vietnam, requiring the country to improve its social security and healthcare system for the elderly.

Vietnam needs to raise awareness about preparation for old age, including planning for financial security, and ensuring medical examination and treatment as well as social policies for the elderly.

Infectious diseases kill more than 300 people per year in the country, while non-infectious disease s kill over 400,000, according to the Ministry of Health.

As many as 70 percent of deaths every year are caused by non-infectious diseases, of which 40 percent occur to people under 70 years old.

Non-infectious diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, mental illness and cancer, not only affect longevity but also the quality of life.

Experts attribute the reasons for the rising number of cases to the fact that people lack awareness about prevention of such diseases. As many as 49 percent of men smoke, and 77 percent of the population drinks alcohol, while 11 percent of them drink at an alarming level.

Salt consumption in Vietnam is double the amount recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The Ministry of Health has set a goal to ensure by 2025 that deaths caused by non-infectious diseases will fall to 20 percent from the current 70 percent.

The goal is to reduce the proportion of people smoking by 30 percent and those drinking alcohol by 10 percent, while reducing salt intake by 30 percent./.

VNA

At the event, Director of the Department of Military Medicine under the General Department of Logistics Major General Nguyen Xuan Kien recalled the military’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Particularly, under the direction of the Ministry of National Defense, the Border Guard Command set up checkpoints at border gates and border paths to prevent illegal border crossings, contributing to minimizing spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the country.

Units in the military provided 175 concentrated quarantine zones for 191,363 people returning from COVID-19-hit countries while taking different COVID-19 prevention measures to ensure safety for delegates at important events of the Party, State, and military and for enlisted youths.

Apart from successfully producing made-in-Vietnam SARS-CoV-2 test kits, the military also researched and developed the Nano Covax vaccine against COVID-19 and started a COVID-19 vaccination program for troops working on the frontline of the fight against the pandemic.

In addition to COVID-19 response, the whole military attached importance to training new enlistees, militiamen, and troops to participate in the 2021 International Army Games (2021 Army Games) .

Military units also carried out programs on overcoming war legacy effectively. Together with detecting and clearing unexploded ordnance in localities across the country, they fostered international cooperation in settling consequences of war.

The whole military conducted surveys and cleared 485,240 hectares of land from unexploded ordnance from 2010 to 2020 and targets to free an additional 800,000 hectares of land for socio-economic development in the next five years.

At the press meeting, organizers answered reporters’ queries relating to the election of deputies to the 15th National Assembly and People’s Councils at all levels in 2021-2026 tenure, COVID-19 vaccination program in the military, the progress and results of unexploded ordnance detection and clearance in Ha Giang province, and the search and collection of remains of fallen soldiers.

Translated by Tran Hoai

Four new industrial parks include 438-hectare Ledana facility, 300-hectare V.com park and 348-hectare Hoa Lu in the Hoa Lu border-gate economic zone in Loc Ninh border district and 6,317-hectare Dong Phu park in Dong Phuc District.

Additionally, the province authority will expand three industrial parks 577.63-hectare Minh Hung III in Chon Thanh District, 317-hectare Bac Dong Phu and 480-hectare Nam Dong Phu in Dong Phu District. Industrial parks are eligible for enjoying exemption of enterprise income tax, import duty for machinery.

The local administrations will support companies in the industrial parks by building connection paths to main roads, waste treatment and the supply of water and power.

Currently, 11 industrial parks are located in Binh Phuoc Province attracting 334 secondary projects including 232 foreign-invested projects and 102 locally-invested projects. Some 171 enterprises have been operating creating 66,200 jobs for local laborers.