VN news (July 10)

[Dam Son <son@fermi.phys.washington.edu>]

US academics propose fund to compensate Agent Orange Victims
Vietnam wife-beaters dominate divorce figures 
Vietnam exam system riddled with cheats 
U.S. plays down beach incident in Vietnam's Danang 
Vietnamese Party Chief to visit China on Sunday 
Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights 
Vietnam 'respects' ASEAN postposting Cambodia admission 
Vietnam rice market stable as exports hold up
Guangxi to Host Vietnam Trade Fair in October 
Vietnam's major economic hub encourages hesitant foreign investors
Vietnam-Russia JV Pumped 4.69M Tons Crude In 1H '97 - Report
Vietnam Allocates $US27.2 Mln For 295 Fishing Vessels
Vietnam To Launch Fishing Industry Development Program 

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US academics propose fund to compensate Agent Orange Victims
in Vietnam 

HANOI, July 10 (AFP) - A group of US scientists and professionals have
proposed creating a fund to compensate victims of Agent Orange, a Vietnamese
doctor said Thursday.

Le Cao Dai, who formerly worked for the 10-80 Committee investigating
the consequences of chemical warfare in Vietnam, told AFP that during
a symposium on Agent Orange in Washington late last month several lawyers
and scientists suggested creating a fund.

Dai, who arrived back from Washington on Wednesday, said he would deliver
the proposal to the Vietnamese government in his capacity as a doctor.

The fund would be supported and administered by non governmental organizations,
Dai said.

Conference participants also promoted setting up joint US-Vietnamese
research teams to investigate the consequences of Agent Orange, Dai said.
Agent Orange, a toxic chemical used by the United States as a defoliant
during the Vietnam War has been featured in a steady barrage of reports
chronicling victims' suffering.

Thursday's official Vietnam News carried a 1,500-word story and photographs
of suspected victims. Vietnam has never officially requested compensation
from the United States, but the topic was raised in general terms by
Communist leader Do Muoi during the visit by US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright last month.

>From 1963 to 1971, the US forces sprayed 72 million litres (18.7 million
gallons) of chemicals covering nearly 10 percent of South Vietnam. About
42 million litres (10.9 million gallons) of Agent Orange, which contains
the debilitating chemical dioxin, were used.

Some 50,000 deformed Vietnamese children have been born to parents exposed
to the chemical, which the United States sprayed over southern Vietnam
to destroy forest cover used by northern Vietnamese troops. At least
two million Vietnamese were affected by the chemical.

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Vietnam wife-beaters dominate divorce figures 

HANOI, July 10 (AFP) - Two-thirds of divorces recorded in Vietnam are
caused by men who beat their wives, reports here said Thursday.

While only 300 Vietnamese were prosecuted for physically abusing their
wives between 1994 and 1996, marital violence has grown across Vietnam
where the number of divorces exceeds 100,000 each year, the Women's Union
newspaper said.

Around 15 percent of women battered by their husbands during marital
arguments died in 1991 and 1992, the paper said.

A majority of divorce requests lodged last year in the southern Ho Chi
Minh City, Vietnam's most populous city, resulted from wife beatings.

"Battered women have lost confidence and are asking in vain for society's
help," the paper said and called for help centres to be set up for women
who had been victims of violence.

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Vietnam exam system riddled with cheats 

HANOI, July 10 (AFP) - Vietnam's higher education entrance exams which
have just finished for the year were riddled with cheating and corruption,
reports here said Thursday.

The exams for universities and higher education establishments were marked
by a series of "interruptions," the Courrier du Vietnam said.

One one occasion, police were forced to intervene after students disqualified
from an exam held at the Institute of Press and Propaganda threatened
invigilators.

Across the country some 2,400 candidates were thrown out of exam rooms
and 60 "stand-in" candidates were discovered sitting exams for friends.

To combat widespread use of doubles, some establishments put up photographs
of students outside exam rooms to ensure candidates were not replaced
by an older brother or cousin.

In some colleges of higher education, some students stole exam papers
in order to resit the exam later in the day, said the paper, adding that
thousands of candidates across the country had "broken the rules" or
seen question papers before the exam.

Cheats even found a foolproof way of beating the competition by destroying
the exam papers of people sitting close to them.

Despite the long list of irregularities the paper said that "on the whole,
the exams went ahead in a more disciplined way" than in previous years,
because of anti-cheat measures introduced this year.

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U.S. plays down beach incident in Vietnam's Danang 

Hanoi, July 10 (Reuter) - American officials in Vietnam said on Thursday
media reports that three U.S. servicemen had beaten a beach photographer
who refused to take pictures of their genitals were largely untrue.

Reports in Vietnam's state-controlled press said the three servicemen,
attached to the U.S. missing-in-action office in Hanoi, had attacked
the man on a beach in Danang after demanding that he take explicit pictures.

U.S. officials in Hanoi confirmed the incident took place but said Vietnam's
state press "did not have many true statements" about the details of
the incident.

They said the three men had got into a fight with the photographer because
they believed they were under surveillance. Police said the man was thrown
into the sea twice and his camera broken, but would not give further
details.

The three officers, on temporary assignment in Vietnam and now in Hawaii,
later paid $100 for damage to the man's cameras.

"Our work here has been built up through years of cooperation," said
Major Daniel Campion, of the Hanoi Missing-In-Action office. "This is
an unfortunate incident, but it won't impact our long-term efforts to
achieve the fullest possible accounting for missing service personnel."

The United States has only a handful of military personnel based in Vietnam.
They are engaged in efforts to account for the 2,100 Americans still
listed as missing in action in Indochina from the Vietnam War.

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Vietnamese Party Chief to visit China on Sunday 

HANOI, July 10 (AFP) - Communist Party Secretary General Do Muoi will
travel to China on Sunday for an official four-day visit, a diplomatic
source said on Thursday.

Muoi will visit Beijing at the invitation of his counterpart Jiang Zemin,
who is also the Chinese president, and will also travel outside the capital
to unspecified provinces, the source said.

He will be accompanied by Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam.
Vietnam does not generally publish specific dates of visits abroad by
the Communist Party Chief for reasons of security.

The visit comes as part of meetings within the framework of "regular
exchanges and high level visits" between the two communist neighbours
since relations were normalised at the end of 1991, he said.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng visited Vietnam in June 1996 to attend
the opening of the Eighth Communist Party Congress.

Good "neighbourly relations" between China and Vietnam were ruptured
in March when China announced it would start drilling for gas in territorial
waters claimed by Vietnam.

Beijing eventually withdrew its exploration vessels a month later after
regional pressure.

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Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights 

Hanoi, July 9 (VNA) - Highlights of Vietnam's daily newspapers today:

NHAN DAN:

- In the first half of this year, Vietsovpetro tapped more than 4.8 million
tonnes of crude oil, an increase of 0.4 percent over the yearly plan.

- The Vietnamese  government is moving to protect the rice export trade
by setting up a national fund to support rice exporters and the planning
of long-term investment to boost the quality of exported rice grain.

HANOI MOI:

- Vietnam has promulgated a decision to work out a strategy of education
and training development by 2020.

VIETNAM NEWS:

- State-owned enterprises will be able to borrow from banks without mortgaging
their assets under State Bank of Vietnam amendments. It means that state
companies will be able to borrow as much as they need provided their
production plans have appropriate approval and borrowers prove their
business efficiency.

- The Vietnam Insurance Corporation (Bao Viet) is working with US-based
Morgan Stanley Group to establish a new insurance joint venture.

- The Sai Gon Electronic and Telecommunications Manufacturing Corporation
broke ground yesterday morning on a US$25 million plant to produce circuit
boards and printed circuit boards in Ho Chi Minh City.

This is a joint venture between the Ho Chi Minh City-based Phuong Nam
Company (Southern Electronics and Informatics Co. Ltd.) and California-based
Harrison Industries Inc., a subsidiary of Airted USA.

(VNA)

09-07 1404

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Vietnam 'respects' ASEAN postposting Cambodia admission 

Japan Economic Newswire
07/10/97

Hanoi -- Vietnam said Thursday it would respect the decision by the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to postpone Cambodia's admission into
the regional group.

"If there is such a decision, it is a consensus of ASEAN and we respect
it," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement in response to a question
by Kyodo News, adding that it had not yet received "official and sufficient"
information on the decision.

Foreign ministers of the ASEAN member countries decided during a meeting
in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday to indefinitely postpone the admission of
Cambodia into the organization because of the volatile situation in the
country and to proceed with the admission of Myanmar and Laos as scheduled.

ASEAN foreign ministers decided in May at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur that
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar would be admitted to the grouping during their
meeting slated for later this month, also in Malaysia's capital.

ASEAN currently comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the
Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Vietnam rice market stable as exports hold up

HANOI, July 10 (Reuter) - Vietnam's rice market was stable this week, with
export shipments continuing apace, but new deals were thin on the ground
as the winter-spring crop petered out. 

"The previous crop has finished and the new one is still ahead," a trader
said. "So trade is slowing down and we have not seen much change in the
price of rice." 

Five percent broken grade was quoted at $259-260 per tonne, FOB Saigon
Port, up slightly from $255 a week ago. Ten percent broken was unchanged
at $245-250 a tonne. 

Loading in Saigon Port has hampered recently by heavy rains. Dealers said
there were about 15 vessels loading that would head for Iraq -- which has
agreed to take 150,000 tonnes under a government-to-government deal -- and
Iran and African countries. 

One trader said he expected prices to rise in the next few weeks because
unseasonably dry weather in the Mekong delta, the country's rice bowl,
could delay some of the summer-autumn crop. 

He reckoned that the drought had damaged tens of thousands of hectares of
the summer-autumn crop, and replanting could delay the harvest, which
normally starts at the end of July, in those areas by about a month. 

Vietnam expects to export 3.5-4.0 million tonne of rice this year. The
official Finance and Market Daily said on Thursday that 1.9 million tonnes
were sold abroad in the first six months of the year, 50 percent more than
in the same period of last year. 

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Guangxi to Host Vietnam Trade Fair in October 

Xinhua English Newswire
07/10/97

Pingxiang, a border city in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region, will hold its Fifth Trade fair from October 8 to 11.

Concurrently, the city will hold its first Border Tourism Festival, at
which a batch of international tourism projects will be negotiated.

Exhibits at the trade fair will cover chemicals, building materials,
pharmaceuticals, farm machinery, foodstuff processing, hardware, textiles
and health care products.

More than 5,000 business people from Vietnam, the Republic of Korea,
Singapore, and Europe and North America are expected to attend the fair
and festival, according to local officials.

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Vietnam's major economic hub encourages hesitant foreign investors

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
07/10/97

Hanoi (dpa) - In a bid to attract new foreign investments to Ho Chi Minh
City, Truong Tan Sang, party chief of Vietnam's biggest urban center,
has vowed to introduce new incentives for overseas businessmen, according
to a published account Thursday.

"The government should reajust the rates of land-use rent in order to
make foreign investors more competitive internationally', Truong Tan
Sang, who is also the member of politburo of Vietnam's ruling Communist
party, was quoted by The Saigon Times Thursday as saying.

In Vietnam land technically belongs to the state and the title-holders
- domestic or foreign-invested - have to rent land from the government,
thus being effectively prevented from using their investments as collateral
overseas.

Until 1975 the capital of South Vietnam formerly known as Saigon, Ho
Chi Minh City is the wealthiest part of Vietnam, enjoying per capita
earnings level of above 900 dollars, more than four times the national
average. At the moment roughly a third of Vietnam's overall FDI have
been committed to Ho Chi Minh City so far, but the inflow is slowing
down.

Analysts argue that investors probably have been discouraged by poor
performance of Ho Chi Minh City's tourist industry, which has been hit
by a fall in tourist arrivals and fiercer competition between higher-standard
hotels just coming into operaion.

Tourist trade professionals say a predicted increase in foreign arrivals
has failed to materialize - despite official claims to the contrary -
as visitors question whether Vietnam offers good value for their money.

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Vietnam-Russia JV Pumped 4.69M Tons Crude In 1H '97 - Report

Hanoi, Jul 09,(Dow Jones)--Russian- Vietnamese oil and gas joint venture
Vietsovpetro pumped 4.69 million metric tons of crude oil and produced
200 million cubic meters of natural gas in the first half of 1997, the
Vietnam News Agency reported.

According to the government-run agency, the company received $735 million
in revenues and contributed $414 million to the state budget from sales
of the oil and gas.

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Vietnam Allocates $US27.2 Mln For 295 Fishing Vessels 

Hanoi, July 9 (VNA) - Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment has
decided to allocate VND 300 billion (around US$27.2 million) in loans
for the building of 295 offshore fishing vessels.

The amount is from the Government's VND 400 billion credits for the fisheries
sector to upgrade the country's offshore fishing fleet.

Out of the VND 300 billion, the General Investment and Development Department
granted loans of VND 160 billion for the building of 132 trawlers and
the Investment and Development Bank gave the remainder for the building
of 163 trawlers.

In the first six months of the year, 900 more fishing vessels have been
built in which 265 have capacity of 90 HP upwards each.

Also in the past six months, the fisheries sector caught 763,000 tonnes
of seafood including 622,000 tonnes caught in deep seas, earning nearly
US$367 million in export value.

(VNA)

09-07 1352

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Vietnam To Launch Fishing Industry Development Program 

Hanoi, July 9 (VNA) - The Ministry of Fisheries hopes to help improve
the daily diets of the Vietnamese people, and build the country's fishing
industry through a new "stretching to the sea" strategy, Vietnam News
daily quotes sources from the Aquatic Product Service (APS) as saying.

Under consideration is the construction of new fishing ports and markets
in urban fishing areas starting with Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

This move, along with upgrading existing facilities, aims to distribute
more fish, a major source of animal protein, to Vietnamese through a
network of distributors and retailers.

Dietitians said more than 30 percent of the national daily intake of
animal protein comes from fish and other aquaproduce.

This percentage is likely higher in coastal areas. Fish consumption was
estimated at 12kg per person each year, though the national production
averaged 17.6kg per capita. This consumption rate should increase, dietitians
say, by six percent annually to top 14kg per person by 2000 and 25kg
by 2010.

The paper reports that the Ministry of Fisheries also expects a big rise
in production of fish and other aquaproduce to keep up the current population
growth rate of 2.2 percent, hence production should be 1.6-1.7 million
tonnes in 2000 to ensure 1.1 million tonnes for local consumption and
2.8-2.9 million tonnes in 2010 for 2.4 million tonnes for Vietnamese
diets.

In the past ten years, little concern has been given to local markets
with fishing ports and markets seeing almost no investment and most of
the catch and production collected (and half processed) by state-owned
enterprises exclusively for export.

Since a cumbersome administrative apparatus governs the enterprises,
many fisheries remain unable to improve their production or processing.

It has been estimated that about 60 percent of fish production was consumed
locally, exchanged by private hands. Private groups and individuals are
very active in the collection and distribution of the products in big
cities and, to a lesser degree, in the countryside. Moreover, they are
skilful in processing and preserving aquaproduce for the market demand.
Dried and canned fish has become particularly popular in Vietnam.

Recently, with foreign and domestic capital invested, the Ministry of
Fisheries adopted the APS programme, designed to tap into the country's
offshore potential.

The programmes top priority is upgrading the fishing fleet.

It will use preferential credits from international organisations - along
with savings, domestic investment credits, and loans from the Asian Development
Bank (ADB) - to build or buy vessels. Fishermen are also urged to upgrade
their boats to 45 HP or more, and to re-focus fishing activities on offshore
areas.

Investment priority is given to major enterprises like the Bien Dong
Seaproduct Corporation, the Ha Long Seafood Production and Exploitation
Corporation, and the fishing fleets of limited liability companies.

Other priorities include building and upgrading fishing ports, with preferential
loans from ADB already planned for many areas, such as Cat Ba, Song Giang,
Phan Thiet, and Con Dao. The second phase of construction of the Cat
Lo fishing port in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province will receive Japanese financial
assistance.

The Ministry is also encouraging local fishery agencies to build new
ports and markets, consolidate processing plants, and offer logistic
services, according to their stretching to the sea strategy.

(VNA)

09-07 1401

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