VN Buss. News (Apr. 10, 1997)

[Vu Thanh Ca <vuca@envi.env.civil.saitama-u.ac.jp>]

Apr 10: Wacoal to set up bra making unit in  Vietnam 
Apr 10: Singapore firm nets deal to restore Vietnam's 'floating hotel'
Apr 10: Vietnam: Ex-Banker Disappears With French BNP Funds
Apr 10: Vietnam: 285 Die In Industrial Accidents In 1996 - Report
Apr 10: Daiwa Securities opens representative office in Vietnam 
Apr 10: Pepsi To Open Vietnam KFCs,Test Singapore Taco Bells
Apr 10: Taiwan Co. Mulls Vietnam Power Plant Projects - Report
Apr 10: Rubin Urges Market Reforms, While Vietnam Seeks U.S. Aid


Thursday, Apr 10, 1997  

Wacoal to set up bra making unit in Vietnam

Japan Economic Newswire

OSAKA  --  Women's underwear maker Wacoal Corp. said Thursday it will set up
next
month a wholly owned subsidiary in  Vietnam.

Vietnam Wacoal Corp., capitalized at 500 million yen, will begin
manufacturing 350,000 brassieres annually from April 1998 and two
million within five years mainly to supply the Japanese market, the
Kyoto-based company said.  

The unit, which will be based in Ho Chi Minh City will be the fifth
overseas production center for the Japanese market, along with
facilities in South Korea, Thailand, China and Indonesia.  

Vietnam Wacoal plans to start operation with a staff of 260 and double
the workforce to 520 in 2002, Wacoal said.  

The subsidiary's output may be exported to Europe and sold within the 
Vietnamese market in the future, the company said.

Thursday, Apr 10, 1997  

Singapore firm nets deal to restore  Vietnam's 'floating hotel'

Singapore (dpa) - A Singapore company has won a bid to repair and
upgrade the ageing Saigon Floating Hotel, converting it into a five-star
resort, a spokesman for the firm said Thursday.   

The 186-room hotel, sitting atop a huge barge, arrived in Singapore
Wednesday from Ho Chi Minh City. Singapore's Sembawang Maritime Ltd
recently clinched the deal to revamp the hotel and tow it to its new
home off the Micronesian island of Palau.

Owned by Japanese firm EIE International, the floating hotel was built
in Singapore 10 years ago by Sembawang Bethlehem Shipyard, and enjoyed a
short stint off Australia's Great Barrier Reef.   

It was then anchored in the Mekong river near Ho Chi Minh City for the
past seven years until  Vietnam refused to renew its operating license.  

Sembawang officials said the contract sum for the project was still
being negotiated. Surveys, mechanical repairs and full interior
renovation are required before the hotel can operate as a posh resort.  

Similar work on a luxury cruise liner with the same number of rooms
would cost some 30 million Singapore dollars (21 million U.S. dollars),
according to reports in Singapore. The Sembawang spokesman called this
figure ``pure speculation,'' and declined to comment on the project's
actual cost.

Thursday, Apr 10, 1997  

Vietnam: Ex-Banker Disappears With French BNP Funds

Hanoi (AP) -- The former deputy general director of a private Vietnamese
bank is missing, having disappeared with $41,000 belonging to France's
Banque Nationale de Paris (F.BNP) and his own former employer.</p>
A warrant for the arrest of Ngo Quy Triet, the sacked deputy general
director of Nam A Joint-Stock Commercial Bank, is expected to be issued
shortly, according to Truong Bao Son, Nam A's general director.</p>
Triet had been borrowing money from BNP for two years before he vanished in
early February with $38,000 of funds owed to the French bank, Son said in a
telephone interview with Dow Jones Thursday.</p>
BNP initially tried to deduct the amount of missing funds from Nam A's
account at its Ho Chi Minh City branch, but relented after several days when
the Vietnamese bank said it had no involvement in the affair, Son said.</p>
Separately, Triet, with the aid of a friend, embezzled 207 million dong
(about $17,700) from one of Nam A's own branches.</p>
The bank's inspection team detected the wrongdoing and Triet's friend has
repaid about 160 million dong of this amount.</p>
The incidents come at a time when Vietnam's banks, in particular its
joint-stock banks, are under scrutiny because of bad-loan problems and
several widely reported cases of lending corruption.</p>
Both commercial bank and central bank credit analysis and control in the
nation are regarded as weak and subject to manipulation.</p>
Triet had worked at Nam A bank since its foundation in October 1993, Son
said.</p>
Like many of Vietnam's joint-stock banks, Nam A is small. Its total capital
is only 30-billion dong ($2.6 million).</p>
According to Son, Triet's disappearance itself didn't harm the bank,
although inaccurate reporting about it in local media has. 'It's affected
the bank and its clients psychologically. Some customers have come to the
bank to draw money out, although the amount isn't so big,' Son said.</p>
Officials at the BNP branch in Ho Chi Minh City couldn't be reached for
immediate comment.

Thursday, Apr 10, 1997  

Vietnam: 285 Die In Industrial Accidents In 1996 - Report

Hanoi (AP) -- About 1,665 people were victims of industrial accidents in
Vietnam in 1996, according to an official media report Thursday.</p>
Of these, 285 people were killed and 467 critically injured, the Ministry of
Labor said, the newspaper Hanoi Moi Cuoi Tuan (New Hanoi Weekend) said.</p>
The figures don't include industrial accidents that occurred in private
enterprises.
The newspaper didn't provide comparative figures for 1995.

Thursday, Apr 10, 1997 

Daiwa Securities opens representative office in Vietnam

HANOI (AFP) - Japan's Daiwa Securities Co. Ltd.
has opened its first representative office in Hanoi, the
official Vietnam News Agency reported Thursday.

Daiwa Securities, one of the world's leading securities
firms with total assets estimated at more than 66 billion
dollars, opened its representative office in the Vietnamese
capital on Tuesday, the agency said. 

The securities company, present in Vietnam since 1992,
boasts investments in Amata industrial park in Bien Hoa in
southern Dong Nai province and has been providing financial
consultancy services to Vietnamese banks, it said. 

Thursday, Apr 10, 1997 

Pepsi To Open Vietnam KFCs,Test Singapore Taco Bells 

SINGAPORE (AP-Dow Jones)--PepsiCo Restaurants International plans to open
KFC fast-food outlets in Vietnam this year and test-market its Taco Bell
Mexican food restaurant in Singapore in the next 18 months, a company
executive told Dow Jones Newswires.</p>
'Vietnam has great potential for us,' said Hester Chew, country manager for
Thailand, Singapore, Burma and the countries of Indochina, including
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. 'We're just doing our field work now, but we
should open a KFC within 1997.'</p>
Chew thinks mature markets such as Singapore and Thailand are promising
testing areas for Taco Bell, the fast-food brand that features burritos and
tacos on its menu. 'I like using Singapore as a test market because it's got
sophisticated tastes in food,' he said. 'But we also think Taco Bell will
work in Thailand.'</p>
Right now, the PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) restaurant unit doesn't operate any Taco
Bells in Asia outside Japan. PepsiCo - which is in the process of spinning
off its global restaurant businesses from its cola and snack operations into
a separate publicly traded company - operates through company-owned stores,
franchises and joint ventures about 2,100 KFC restaurants and 700 to 800
Pizza Huts in Asia, which includes the Middle East.</p>
Chew also plans to increase the number of KFCs operating in Thailand, one of
the company's strongest markets in Asia. Chew, who has been country manager
of Thailand for eight years, oversaw the expansion of KFC in the country.</p>
In 1989, there were five KFCs operating in Thailand. By the end of 1997,
Chew said he expects to have 200 stores in operation with sales of about
US$130 million range, an estimated 30% increase over 1996. A majority of the
Thai stores are company-owned with 35% operated through a joint venture with
Thailand's Central Group.</p>
Chew took on responsibilities for managing Singapore and the emerging
markets of Indochina in November 1996. Chew replaced Mark Seals in
Singapore. Seals is now country manager for South Korea. Chew, based in
Bangkok, now oversees the operations of 250 fast-food outlets with S$350
million in sales and more than 8,000 employees.</p>
In Singapore, Chew said he will close three to four underperforming KFC and
Pizza Hut outlets this year. Additionally, both brands will undergo
facelifts in the coming year with restaurants being modernized. ``Our KFCs
look tired and dated,'' Chew said. All KFC and Pizza Hut stores in Singapore
are owned by Pepsi.

Thursday, Apr 10, 1997 

Taiwan Co. Mulls Vietnam Power Plant Projects - Report

TAIPEI (AP) -- After pulling the plug on a US$100 million power plant
project in China last year, President Energy Development Ltd., a member of
the President Group, is considering shifting its power plant investment
projects to Vietnam and the Philippines, according to a report in the United
Daily News Wednesday.</p>
The report said company president Wu Ti-chung will visit Vietnam in May to
study the feasibility of setting up power plants there. The company is
seeking to invest about NT$10 billion in power plant joint ventures in
Vietnam, the newspaper said.</p>
Officials at President Energy Development refused to comment on the report,
saying Mr. Wu is on an overseas business trip and will return to Taiwan
Friday.</p>
The President Group in September 1996 canceled a US$100 million project to
build two thermal electric power plants in central China, in response to
calls from Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to scale down major investments
in China.


Thursday, Apr 10, 1997 

Rubin Urges Market Reforms, While Vietnam Seeks U.S. Aid 

Ho Chi Minh City (WSJ) -- U.S.-Vietnam ties are at the stage where
symbolism is everything.

Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin accomplished at least one goal on his
quick visit with Vietnam's political and economic leaders: He steered clear
of the "shiny black Cadillac" that diplomats say Vietnam has preserved
should it ever want to take U.S. officials for a spin down memory lane.
Mr. Rubin was careful to avoid the embarrassment of being photographed
in the limousine that reputedly took Washington's ambassador to the airport
as Saigon fell in April 1975. Instead, he was driven around in
government-supplied, U.S.-made sedans.

Mr. Rubin had one message to deliver: Market economies work, and Vietnam
needs reforms to make sure it has one. The Rubin doctrine is that efficient
and sound financial and capital markets, when backed by appropriate
economic policies and legal regimes, will help developing nations like
Vietnam attract capital.

This wasn't what the Vietnamese wanted to hear. They are wondering where
the aid money is nearly three years after President Clinton began a
"normalization" process by lifting an almost 22-year-old trade embargo.
Diplomatic relations were restored in July 1995, though the U.S. has yet to
send an ambassador. "I get a sense of tremendous desire to move ahead," Mr.
Rubin said.
It will take time, he told the Vietnamese. "Government isn't a monument
to alacrity." He didn't appear to make any promises other than to try to
speed up efforts in Washington provided Hanoi holds up its end of the
bargain.
For Vietnamese officials, the brass ring is Export-Import Bank credit,
loans and political-risk insurance from the Overseas Private Investment
Corp., and tariff treatment that puts Vietnam on the same level as other
U.S. trading partners. With an estimated $42 billion in infrastructure
needs over the next three years, half of which it hopes to fund from
abroad, Vietnam is keen on lining up credit from the U.S., which is
providing only a trickle of humanitarian aid.
A $145 million debt-rescheduling agreement -- in which Hanoi took
responsibility for U.S. loans to the long-gone South Vietnamese regime --
signed by Mr. Rubin and his Vietnamese counterpart earlier this week lays
some groundwork for fresh credits. But a number of other U.S. requirements
must be met, particularly a bilateral trade agreement on open markets and
protection for U.S. intellectual property.
In an address to Vietnamese students, Mr. Rubin ticked off reforms aimed
at moving Vietnam toward a market economy and aiding its efforts to raise
capital: reforms of education and health sectors, higher national savings
rates, development of domestic capital and financial markets, "sound"
budget practices, free trade. "None of this is easy," Mr. Rubin
acknowledged. "Even a fully developed country is struggling with all of
these issues."
One student questioned the wisdom of developing a stock market. The
ever-cautious Mr. Rubin emphasized the need to educate the Vietnamese about
markets so they will understand the risks.
As is his practice, Mr. Rubin visited rural World Bank project sites and
also took in a tour of Hanoi's Temple of Literature, which was a leading
university for nearly 700 years. There, a performer placed a large
mushroom-shaped straw hat on his head.
It was amusing for a moment. But later he remarked that the incident
reminded him of photographs of 1988 Democratic presidential candidate
Michael Dukakis in a tank. "One of the things I've learned in this
business," he said, "is not to let yourself get photographed wearing a
hat."