National 4 h youth conference center

The Hanoitimes – Hanoi identifies the logistics sector essential to meet the demand of nearly 300,000 enterprises in the city and further support the its socio-economic development process.

Hanoi plans to have a total of 10 logistics centers, and the city has approved investment plans for six, other three are under research and one is looking for investors, according to Vice Chairman of the Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen Van Suu.

Overview of the dialouge. Photo: Thanh Hai.

With nearly 300,000 operational enterprises, logistics services play a key role for Hanoi’s development, stated Mr. Suu at a high-level panel dialogue in the Vietnam Logistics Forum 2020 held on November 26.

In Hanoi’s annual investment conferences, the city has always been calling for investments for logistics centers, he added.

In addition to the development of inland container depot (ICD), one of Hanoi’s advantages is a network of major rivers, so that the city is planning to build a network of container ports to boost inland waterway transportation, Mr. Suu informed.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh said the ministry and Hanoi’s authorities would continue to cooperate to realize the goal of turning Hanoi into a logistics hub of not only Vietnam but also the region.

As the city is pushing for the development of transport infrastructure, logistics services and innovative startups, Mr. Anh said Hanoi could become an example for other provinces and cities in taking logistics as a driving force for socio-economic development.

Overview of the dialouge. Photo: Thanh Hai.

Staying central in new regional supply chains

To further support the development of logistics companies, Deputy Minister of Finance Vu Thi Mai said customs authorities are applying new technologies to save costs and time for the business community, including the recent deployment of GPS positioning seal system to track all import-export shipments transported by containers.

This latest technology would ensure that 100% of shipments are delivered in a right direction and the right time.

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Transport Le Dinh Tho said the Ministry of Transport is cooperating with other provinces and cities in boosting connectivity among different transport modes of road, railway, waterway, and aviation.

Mr. Tho suggested by taking advantage of multi-modal transportation network and IT technology in operation, logistics firms could significantly reduce their costs.

In the 2021–2025 period, the Ministry of Transport would focus on upgrading transport infrastructure to meet growing needs of economic development.

World Bank Vietnam’s senior expert Pham Minh Duc said that to be part of a new global supply chain with high resilience, the country should enhance its production capability and strive to become a global hub of production.

In this process, Vietnam should grasp opportunities from the “China plus 1” strategies of multinationals to play a center role in the region’s new supply chains.

The most important factor is that Vietnam should have an attractive business environment, strong production capability and a modern logistics sector.

The Hanoitimes – Vietnam said people must always be placed at the center of all dialogues and trust-building measures in Myanmar.

Vietnam’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy has called on international efforts to assist Myanmar’s democratic transition with an aim to ensure the people-centered approach.

Vietnam’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy calls for international support for Myanmar issues. Photo: Vietnam News Agency

The support, including that from ASEAN, needs to respect the independence, sovereignty, and internal affairs of Myanmar while securing humanitarian access and essential services to local people, mostly vulnerable ones, Quy said at the United Nations General Assembly’s informal meeting on Myanmar held on February 26.

He urged stakeholders to exert restraint, avoid escalating tensions and seek dialogues towards satisfying solutions, which are in line with the constitution, laws and people’s aspiration.

He asked UN Special Envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener and representatives of 50 members of the UN and eight regional organizations to coordinate with ASEAN in stabilizing the situation in Myanmar.

Kyodo News has reported that Foreign Ministers of ASEAN member states will hold a special meeting on March 2 to discuss the situation in Myanmar.

It would be the first of such meeting of the 10-member bloc since Myanmar’s military declared a state of emergency and detained leaders, including U Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1.

Most ASEAN countries have expressed readiness to attend the meeting, with Myanmar’s military-appointed Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin also asked to attend.

Myanmar has seen an outpouring of anger and defiance from hundreds of thousands of protesters who have gathered to call for Suu Kyi’s release and a return to democracy.

Hundreds of anti-coup protesters who have rallied daily in the country’s largest city against a junta that toppled civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi have been dispersed by police, AFP reported.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Stoffers – Country director, Vietnam The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom

The United Kingdom is an important trading partner of Vietnam. In 2020, trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $6.6 billion. With $5.8 billion in exports, Vietnam’s trade balance was clearly positive, which also underlines the country’s strong interest in reaching an amicable agreement with the UK. In recent years, despite the uncertainties associated with Brexit, the growth of trade relations has been unbroken, averaging 12.1 per cent per annum in 2011-2019.

The trade relations between the EU and Vietnam are naturally greater given the fact that the EU is the world’s largest market. In 2019, the EU was the second-most important overseas market for Vietnamese products with a total trade volume of $56.45 billion, of which Vietnam’s exports accounted for two-thirds ($41.55 billion). This is 16 per cent of the country’s total export volume. In 2020, exports to the EU increased to $34.8 billion, and imports to $14.5 billion.

Vietnam benefits significantly more from bilateral economic relations than the EU. The continuous surplus Vietnam enjoys in its bilateral trade relations with the EU has been instrumental in offsetting Vietnam’s huge trade deficits with China and South Korea.

Vietnam exports mainly electronics, footwear, clothing and textiles, coffee, seafood, and furniture. The most important goods of EU exports to Vietnam are high-tech products including boilers, machinery and mechanical products, electrical machinery and equipment, pharmaceuticals, and a very limited number of motor vehicles. The EVFTA opens many opportunities for producers and traders on both sides, including small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The EVFTA is of course one of the most modern and far-reaching agreements of its kind. It plays an important role in promoting trade liberalisation between Vietnam and the EU.

Combined with the new Law on Investment which entered into force on January 1, and the other FTAs concluded by Vietnam, the Southeast Asian country has set an important course to improve its position as a trading partner and investment destination. From Vietnam’s perspective, the UKVFTA goes in the same direction.

The UK, looking to strike deals in the aftermath of Brexit, used the EVFTA as a template for a Vietnam deal, photo Le Toan

Differences and similarities

“Recognising their longstanding and strong partnership based on common principles and values, and their important economic, trade and investment relationship”. This formula replaces the preamble of the EVFTA in the UKVFTA. If one reads both agreements in parallel, one notices the large overlaps, not only at the beginning, where only some words are replaced by others.

In fact, there are so many similarities between the two FTAs that it is fair to call the UKVFTA a clone of the EVFTA. However, there are some small but subtle differences.

In 14 sectors of the agreement, the UK allows Vietnam to export at zero tax with a certain quota: egg yolks and poultry, garlic, sweetcorn, milled rice, milled rice, tapioca starch, tuna, surimi, sugar and products high in sugar, mushrooms, ethanol, mannitol, sorbitol, Dextrin, and other modified starches.

In the area of banking services, Vietnam agreed to favourably allow UK credit institutions to increase their foreign holdings to 49 per cent of their charter capital in a Vietnamese joint stock commercial bank. Similar to the EVFTA framework, this commitment is only valid for five years (after that, Vietnam will not be bound by this commitment) and not applicable to the four joint stock commercial banks with a dominant government share, BIDV, VietinBank, Vietcombank, and Agribank.

In addition, the implementation of this commitment will be required to fully comply with regulations on procedures for mergers and acquisitions as well as safety and competition conditions, including the applicable shareholding limit. Vietnam allows the EU to raise 49 per cent in two banks while allowing the UK for the equal or even higher treatment of a bank (mostly HSBC and Standard Chartered) to raise their holding to the ceiling.

Within the EVFTA, one of the signing parties may grant subsidies when they are necessary to achieve a public policy objective. The parties acknowledge that certain subsidies have the potential to distort the proper functioning of markets and undermine the benefits of trade liberalisation. In principle, a party should not grant subsidies to enterprises providing goods or services if they negatively affect, or are likely to affect, competition and trade.

As far as the UKVFTA is concerned, the policy is less tolerant. “In principle, a party should not grant subsidies to enterprises providing goods or services if they significantly negatively affect or are likely to significantly negatively affect trade between the two parties.”

In several areas, the EVFTA is more specific than the UKVFTA. There are for instance some notes on fruit and vegetables in accordance with the Common Customs Tariff provided for in Commission Implementing Regulations and successor acts, laying down detailed rules.

Binding Vietnam into more specific rules is a wise strategy to make sure products are high quality and stops sub-standard products entering difficult UK markets.

Global Britain

Following the UK’s decision to leave the EU, the UK faces many challenges. A key one was how to manage trade relations with countries that had previously benefited from the EU’s trade agreements. As a huge trading bloc encompassing 27 European nations the EU is, in terms of trade policy, a power factor that can forcefully assert its interests.

Of course, a medium-sized single country like the UK does not have this power. Therefore, concessions have to be made that a giant like the EU does not have to make. However, the sheer size of the EU means that the individual and sometimes conflicting interests of the individual member states have to be taken into account. As a result, decision-making processes sometimes remain protracted, as can be seen in the decade-long negotiations on the EVFTA.

Accordingly, Great Britain has the advantage of being very agile. This means that FTAs can be launched much more quickly. This is especially true if no major concessions are expected on the part of the contracting partner. In addition, existing agreements – such as the very comprehensive and modern EVFTA – can be used as a model.

“Global Britain” is the British government’s leitmotif for its post-Brexit foreign policy. It was used by Theresa May in her first major speech as prime minister at her party’s conference. It signals that the country would not be inward-looking after Brexit, but on the contrary would have a global perspective that goes beyond Europe.

As stated in the joint agreement between the UK and Vietnam in last December, the UKVFTA is “also a key step towards the UK joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership”. Therefore, the UKVFTA is only one, but an essential building block of the post-Brexit UK’s liberal trade policy. Many more agreements will follow.

In order to reposition Vietnam after the COVID-19 crisis, both the EVFTA and the UKVFTA are an important element on the road to economic recovery. After the pandemic has started to shake the world’s economy, Vietnam has used the time well.

In addition to these two FTAs, there are many other steps to take, above all the new investment law, which helps Vietnam to emerge stronger from the crisis. Vietnam’s goal in repositioning its economy is not reaching a “V-shaped” curve of improvement, as so many other nations hope; rather, it lies in a “square-root recovery” where the pre-crisis level is not only to be reached, but clearly surpassed in order to continue growing at a higher level.

The efforts of the Southeast Asian nation will be crowned with success, and most analysts are bullish about Vietnam’s prospects. The EVFTA and the UKVFTA stand for the open and liberal politics of Vietnam, and they will make Vietnam – especially in conjunction with the new investment law and EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement – more attractive for foreign investors.

The Hanoitimes – The country has approximately nine million of people or around 9% population living in poverty.

Poor people are listed among priority groups in Vietnam’s vaccination against Covid-19, which is planned to take place in March.

People aged 65 and older are listed in priority groups for Covid vaccination in Vietnam. Photo: VGP

According to the United Nations, around 9% of Vietnam’s population or roughly nine million people living in poverty in 2019, a drastic reduction from 57% in 1990.

Factors that characterized the poor include large size of household, low education and skills, dependency on agriculture, remoteness in rural mountainous areas, lack of supporting infrastructure. The poor nowadays is also specifically associated with ethnic minorities in mountainous area rather than urban migrants.

Under the government’s resolution dated February 26, the poor and social beneficiaries belong to nine groups of people prioritized for the inoculation in the country of nearly 100 million population.

Other groups in the priority list include:

– Health workers and frontline forces (members of the steering committee for Covid prevention at all levels, people working in quarantine centers, contact tracers, volunteers, reporters, among others); army officers; policemen.

– Vietnamese diplomats abroad; customs and state officials working in immigration service.

– Essential providers in aviation, transportation, tourism, clean water, electricity, among others.

– Teachers and employees in education sector; people working in administration agencies having frequent contact with others.

– People with underlying diseases and those above 65 years of age.

– People in the pandemic-hit areas.

– The poor and social beneficiaries.

– People in overseas mission.

– And other people decided by the Ministry of Health basing on the requirements of the pandemic control.

People, who are subject to the first shots (the first phase) of the 117,000 doses, are health workers and frontline forces.

The first batch of vaccine arrived in Vietnam on February 24 from British–Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

Vietnam is under the fresh Covid-19 outbreak that resurged in late January, recording more than 800 locally-transmitted infections so far.

The Hanoitimes – The city’s authorities will promote production of handicraft products.

Hanoi will set up 30-40 new showrooms displaying and selling products developed under the national One Commune One Product (OCOP) program.

A OCOP showroom in Thanh Tri district, Hanoi. Photo: kinhtedothi

This is an important target mentioned in the city’s plan on the development of OCOP showrooms associated with craft village tourism in Hanoi in 2021.

Under the plan, the city’s authorities will promote production and sale of handicraft products, especially OCOP products, typical rural industrial items, and those with market potential in the capital, provinces and cities nationwide.

According to the plan, each district/town will have two operating OCOP showrooms or more.

The municipal People’s Committee will conduct a survey to find locations of OCOP showrooms according to regulations.

The committee has also required departments and localities to inspect and supervise the operation of OCOP showrooms opened in 2020 and 2021, organize promotional programs to enhance the consumption of quality products, including those from provinces and cities nationwide.

As of 2020, Hanoi had completed a similar process for 630 OCOP products achieving 3-star rating and above.

The city targets to complete the evaluation and classification for at least 2,000 OCOP products by 2025, Director of the municipal Department of Agricultural and Rural Development Chu Phu My told a conference taking stock of the OCOP program last year. In the coming time, the city will continue to push for greater efficiency in the implementation of the program.