Vietnam - News and Regulations

INSURANCE - Optimistic about 2010 insurance market

Insurance is considered as one of the sectors that will see robust growth in 2010.

Pham Quang Tung, director of Bidv Insurance Co (BIC) said that "In 2009, BIC excellently fulfilled its plan with total revenue exceeding the milestone of 548 billion dong while the economy had various changes. Particularly, the company's pre-tax profit in 2009 reached 81.25 billion dong. This is the highest profit within four years of operations, exceeding the company's plan. Following the successes of 2009, this year is considered as an important year during BIC's development path. The year 2010 is seen as the important transitional year for the following development path when BIC becomes a public company.

In 2010, BIC targets at revenue growth of 35 percent, profit increase of 23 percent and keeps one of the top ten positions regarding the insurance market share and the top five regarding return on equity in the non-life insurance market in Vietnam. In order to promote its competitiveness capacity, BIC will continue developing new products, enforcing distribution channels, strongly investing into human resources and improving service quality.

Regarding the organisational structure, the operation model of BIC will also have important changes in line with the model of a public company according to the company's equitisation and share listing plan in 2010.

Speed up to fulfil the target in 2010: Takashi Fujii, chair cum CEO of Dai-chi Life Vietnam

Takashi Fujii said that "Looking back 2009, the general difficulties of the economy, particularly instabilities of the financial market caused significant impact on performances of Vietnam's insurance businesses. However, as for life insurance products with protection features, the changes and instabilities of the market seemed not to impose significant impacts on many businesses. Normally, when the life is more risky, people pay more attention to protection of life insurance. This was demonstrated by the continued increase of insurance premiums in 2009, the growth of the number of offices and agents.

"I can say that I am satisfied with what Dai-ichi Life Vietnam achieved in 2009. We expanded the network of offices together with improving service quality, building strong human resource, investing into a modern information technology system and others. Especially, 2009 is the second consecutive year that the company gained profit with total insurance premium revenue of 744 billion dong, rising by 27 percent against 2008".

"In 2010, we will focus on expanding the network of offices, improving service quality and introducing new product with more utilities, in order to provide clients more options when participating into Dai-icho Life Vietnam's insurance policies. Our market share is now nearly 7 percent and our target is 10 percent by 2012; thus, in 2010 we will speed up to fulfil the target. The insurance market in 2010 is predicted to continue suffering from unforeseeable changes of the economy. However, I still believe that the year 2010 will still be a relatively stable year for Vietnam's insurance market."DTCHK

POWER - EVN plans new power plant projects

Hanoi — National power utility Electricity of Viet Nam (EVN) has said it would generate an additional 2,000 MW from 15 new hydropower and thermal projects nationwide this year.

These projects include Ban Ve, Srepok 3, Dong Nai, An Khe – Kanak, the first turbine group of the Son La hydropower plant, and the second turbine groups of the Quang Ninh and Hai Phong thermal power plants.

EVN will also complete the transmission grid for Ha Noi, a 500-KV transformer station for Pleiku and speed up other transmission projects in the Central Highlands and southern regions to ensure stable power supplies after 2012.

Furthermore, the group will also provide power to remote ethnic minority hamlets in five Central Highlands provinces, for the Khmer people in southern provinces of Soc Trang and Tra Vinh, and for poor households in the two northernmost provinces of Dien Bien and Lai Chau.

The Phu Quoc Island in the southern province of Kien Giang will soon be linked to the national grid through the 110-KV undersea cable system.

The northern province of Son La and southern province of Bac Lieu will get 85-per-cent financial support from State budget to build electricity grids to reach out to remote and ethnic minority areas.

The Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Sai Gon daily) has quoted the corporation as saying it will also submit to the government a report on investment in nuclear power and other plans for the national power grid in the 2008-15 period.

This year, EVN will start constructing six more thermal and hydropower plants with a total capacity of 5,356 MW and prepare for four other projects capable of generating 2,760 MW that will begin construction next year. — VNS

INFRASTRUCTURE - Japanese to help build, maintain infrastructure

HCM CITY — The Japanese government is teaming up with companies from that country to build, operate and maintain infrastructure facilities in emerging markets, including Viet Nam, according to a Japanese daily newspaper.

Their first undertaking in Viet Nam will be three infrastructure projects worth 75 billion yen (US$820 million), the Nikkei said.

The projects, expected to be awarded by the Vietnamese Government as early as next month, include setting up a water supply system in Ha Noi by NGK Insulators Ltd and Metawater Co, installing intelligent transportation systems on a highway linking Ha Noi and HCM City by the Central Nippon Expressway Co, and construction of a bio-mass power plant on the outskirts of HCM City by Electric Power Development Co.

The Japanese government will offer trade insurance and other support in case Viet Nam and other countries delay or suspend payments. It could also offer insurance cover for the projects as a whole, including operations and upkeep.

Japanese firms' involvement in infrastructure projects in Asia and elsewhere has so far been limited to construction and supply of materials.

The projects will focus on nuclear and efficient thermal power plants, water systems, railways, recycling operations, telecommunications and the like.

The Government will draw up strategies to help Japanese firms win infrastructure orders in the next decade or so and consider providing financial support to Japanese consortiums.

Around 2 per cent, or some $1 trillion, of the world's gross domestic product is spent every year on constructing and maintaining infrastructure, according to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

With infrastructure demand to balloon in emerging markets, spending will total an estimated $41 trillion between 2005 and 2030. —VNS

FINANCE - CPI hard to be reined at 7pct

Considering the effects of an increase in prices of essential goods such as petroleum, electricity (from March 1), managers and economists are worried that inflation may exceed the ceiling 7 percent mark.

Right from January, consumer price index (CPI) unexpectedly increased by 1.36 percent, so, many economists simultaneously warned of possible return of high inflation. In February, the market prices saw the highest change in the year. The finance ministry said that purchasing power and demand of people on the lunar New Year holidays unexpectedly increased, namely up 20-30 percent in the urban area, 10 - 15 percent up in the rural area. Particularly, prices of some kinds of vegetables and meat increased by from 100 percent to over 400 percent, prices of overseas tours surged by 30-50 percent. Additionally, vehicle parking and restaurant services also rose by 50 percent to 400 percent. The transport freight reported the highest growth because many businesses collected additional service charges of 40-60 percent of ticket prices for inter-province routes.

An expert from the finance ministry's price management department said that in recent years, the pricing rule has been broken due to the impact of various internal and external factors. Normally, the whole first quarter accounts for up to 50 percent of CPI of the full year. This year is also not exceptional when in the first two months alone, CPI climbed up to 3.35 percent against December 2009. Meanwhile, early March, the electricity price will be increased, hence, CPI would hardly surge lowly or keep the same as other years. Therefore, the risk of high inflation increase exists.

Director of the price management department Nguyen Tien Thoa said that when building the inflation criteria of 7 percent, experts have already considered such factors as the increased prices of petroleum, electricity, salary as well as the world's price trend as predicted by big economic organisations. In order to control inflation, it is necessary to simultaneously carry out such measures as regulating the monetary, price, fiscal, export-import, market policies.

Nguyen Duc Thang, vice director of the general Statistical Office's trade-service-price department, said that "as usual, the CPI increase of 3.35 percent in the first two months should not be worrying because this is also equivalent to the increase of the period of 2003-2007 when inflation and recession had not existed. The risk of high inflation will likely appear in the middle of the year when the delay of the monetary loosening policy starts together with the general price growth due to the economic recovery. This may be the unusual movement of CPI compared to the rule of other years." Thus, reining inflation at 7 percent is not easy.

According to GSO, CPI in February increases by 1.96 percent against January, and the highest growth since July 2008.NGLD

STOCK MARKET - SBV holds line on prime rate

State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has announced to keep the prime rate of dong at 8 percent pa in March 2010. Whether this is an optimistic signal for the development prospect of Vietnamese stock market is a million dollar question?

The finance market factually is reacting positively to the information on basic rate adjustment.

Usually, central banks monitor the monetary policies by financial tools such as discount rate, compulsory reserve ratio, open market operations (OMO), and regulations on lending rate for commercial banks based on chartered capital/ownership capital or deposits. In Vietnam, along with the above tools, SBV controls the monetary market by basic rates plus administrative measures.

Previously, the basic rate was used as a rule to deal with usurious lending. Accordingly, Clause 476 Civil Law 2005 regulated that the market's lending rate was not allowed to surpass 150 percent of basic rates fixed by Central Bank.

Basic rate became a useful tool by the start of 2008 when the lending rates continuously climbed to new highs and banks raced to hike deposit rates. At present, the basic rate is used to regulate the ceiling lending rate for the credit market according to Decision No 16/2008/QD-NHNN. Also, the basic rate is for SBV to fix the ceiling deposit rate of commercial banks.

In later half of 2009 when the government's economic stimulus package ended and the post-crisis capital demand was on an upward trend, basic rate tool could not be promoted effectively like previously. With the basic rate of 8 percent pa, the ceiling lending rate is curbed at 12 percent pa and the negotiated deposit rate is 10.5 percent pa at highest. However, the real interest rates on the market surpassed both above ceiling levels. Lending rate factually stands at 17-18 percent pa while the deposit rate is common at 13-14 percent pa.

According to the latest announcement of SBV, March will be the consecutive fourth month the basic rate is kept at 8 percent pa, showing that SBV seems to popularise the message that inflation is still under control. The authority committed to maintain the basic rates at a suitable level to stimulate the economic growth.

Reportedly, February Consumer Price Index (CPI) surged 1.96 percent month on month. During the first two months of 2010, CPI has increased by 3.35 percent against the full year's 7 percent target. Compared with the previous years, February CPI of 2010 was higher than February CPI 2009, but much lower than February CPI of 2002 to 2008. Average CPI of the seven years rose by 2.54 percent and all February CPI rise was over 2 percent. Therefore, the CPI of February 2010 is not worrisome. A surge in February CPI of 2010 came from the prolonged Tet holidays and the impacts of forex rate adjustment.

To help credit institutions avoid the affects of ceiling lending rate regulation, last January 23, 2009 SBV issued Circular No 01/2009/TT-NHNN allowing credit institutions to carry out the negotiated interest rate for consumer loans. Accordingly, credit institutions could be allowed to lend medium and long term loans at negotiated rates. Meanwhile, they could collect extra fees on short term loans. If these become true, banks could raise capital more easily and the transparency in corporate business expense will be improved.

Specialist forecasts that it will take some time to ease the market's real interest rate. However, 2010 CPI is not too alarming. Real interest rates are moving close to the peak.SN

FOOTWEAR - Footwear exports to top $6.2b

Leather and footwear exports could top $6.2 billion this year, according to the Leather and Footwear Research Institute. They were worth $5.3 billion last year.

The leather and footwear sector has posted impressive growth in recent years to become the third biggest export earner behind garment and textile and crude 011, the Ministry of Industry and Trade-run institute said.

There are more than 700 firms operating in the sector, employing 700,000-750,000 workers, of whom 80 percent are women.

But with 70 percent of these firms merely doing subcontracting work for foreign companies, their techniques, technologies, and designs depend completely on their foreign principals.

Besides, with the industry importing most raw materials, Vietnamese footwear products see little value-addition, experts said, noting that their competitive advantage in terms of prices over rivals like

China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand is also gradually shrinking.

To develop sustain ably and become more competitive, the sector needs to restructure and increase the local content rate, they said.

It should upgrade technologies, expand the product range, and improve quality to meet the increasing demands of consumers, they said.

They urged the industry to hire designers and create its own designs rather than just wait for orders and make products based on designs provided by the buyers.

To capture the domestic market, footwear firms should research the market and expand distribution networks, they said. The industry now exports up to 90 percent of its output.

Vietnam ranks fourth globally in footwear exports, selling its products to 50 countries and territories, with the EU, US, and Japan being the main buyers.

The main export items are sports, canvas, and leather shoes and sandals.VNS

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT - Jan-February FDI attraction rises by 5 times

In Jan-Feb, Vietnam has attracted 88 new foreign-invested projects worth registered $1.8 billion of FDI, reported Foreign Investment Department.

Similarly, HCM City's FDI attraction hit over $300 million with 29 projects. The city governance is considering licensing some real estate projects with total estimated cost of over $3 billion.

With $920 million for two FDI projects registered in the first two months of 2010, Ba Ria Vung Tau becomes the top province in FDI attraction.TT

REGIONAL TRADE - Vietnam-India trade turnover targets $5b in coming years

Chair of the National Assembly, Nguyen Phu Trong recently paid a five-day official visit to India (February 23 to 28) and Indonesia (February 28 to March 3) confirming the hope of promoting the close tie between Vietnam with these two countries.

In India, Trong had important talks with India's high-ranking leaders and participated in Vietnam-India Business Forum and inaugurated ceremony of "Vietnamese days in India" programme.

At the meeting with chair of Indian lower house of Parliament, Meira Kumar, Trong highly praised India's helps on equipments, technology and training and suggested the two partners should continue to promote cooperation in coming years too. Especially, after the Asean-India Trade in Goods (AITIG) was signed, Vietnam-India two-way trade turnover could reach $5 billion in coming years.

Meira Kumar also said that India National Assembly will create favourable conditions for Vietnam's enterprises to seek investment opportunities in India.DT

When should you outsource customer analytics?

By Barney Beal, News Director

12 Jan 2010 | SearchCRM.com

Last month, IBM rolled out a new service called Voice of the Customer Analytics (VOCA), a subscription-based service that combines analytics, data mining and text analytics to give organizations an integrated view of customer sentiment.

It was a natural step for IBM, which has built out its business intelligence and data management capabilities significantly in the last several years thanks to a number of acquisitions, including Ascential for data integration, Cognos for BI and SPSS for predictive analytics.

But while Big Blue would seem well qualified to do the heavy lifting for a company, does it make sense for companies to outsource their customer analytics?

"There's a place for it; I don't think as big a place as [IBM] may be hoping," said Jill Dyche, partner and co-founder of Baseline Consulting Inc. "What I fear is this is going to lull executives into a sense of complacency that they'll outsource what should be very strategic work."

IBM's VOCA offering promises to mine diverse customer interactions like audio recordings, call transcripts, email and survey results to provide a view of customer sentiment. IBM can combine the unstructured data with structured data from databases and CRM systems to deliver actionable insight, according to Kevin English, global offering lead for CRM analytics. The Voice of the Customer program is delivered as a managed services offering and can be purchased standalone or as part of IBM's business process outsourcing. It will focus primarily on the call center market, English said, with users looking to improve customer satisfaction, up-sell and cross-sell.

Outsourced analytics is certainly not a new development.

"Companies such as Axiom, Experian, Dun & Bradstreet, Epsilon, Info USA -- all of these service providers have teams of statisticians and consultants that do just that. They provide it on a flexible basis -- either project-based or as retained services," said Leslie Ament, managing partner of Hypatia Research and Consulting. "The difference is, it’s mostly structured analysis. They haven’t yet integrated online with offline or structured and unstructured."

Although IBM -- with its vast consulting resources and the technology of SPSS, DB2, Cognos and IBM Content Analyzer to support it -- is probably better equipped to handle a company's customer analytics than the organization itself, buyers should proceed carefully. A voice of the customer program, when done right, needs to encompass the entire organization and be viewed strategically, Dyche said.

"It's very tempting to use them as these little survey factories when that data can be so much more meaningful and strategic to a company," she said.

Companies which do that often end up marginalizing the voice of the customer.

When is it right to outsource customer analytics?

Yet there are instances where outsourcing customer analytics makes sense, Dyche added – notably, in call centers and business processes that themselves have already been outsourced.

"The threat of this is that it's not so much the analytics but the data that will stay siloed," she said. "Then it's not the tool that gets slapped on that's the hard part. It's the data coming from these new systems that's really the hard part."

Alternatively, businesses that don't require much in the way of creativity when conducting analysis of customer data may be well served by outsourcing. Repetitive queries that don't require ad hoc reporting can be good candidates for outsourcing -- for example, sales reporting off point of sales systems, Dyche said.

The sheer amount of data and complexity of systems is something that organizations should consider when debating whether or not to outsource their customer analytics, according to Ament.

"Some organizations have up to 10 transactional and/or database systems due to multiple business units or offerings," she said. "To try to create algorithms or do data mining and content mining is incredibly challenging and almost impossible within the confines and inconsistent database structures, along with the infrastructure that they have in house."

Another consideration is whether outsourcing means potentially losing out on competitive advantage.

"If I were IBM and I were sifting through all that information, I would certainly want to take my findings and best practices and bake them into algorithms that I could package and resell," Ament said.

It's not necessarily an all-or-nothing equation either. Organizations have been happily outsourcing analytics for years, accessing some slice of expertise from an outsider.

"Marketing services providers have been doing that for ages," Ament said. "Experian and Dun & Bradstreet have done this type of work for Staples, even though Staples has [its] own internal analytics team. It's not necessarily that expertise is lacking but the infrastructure is lacking, and the only way to manage and integrate and create consistency in how information is managed and utilized is to outsource it."

Beware the pitfalls of outsourcing customer analytics

Yet beware of outsourcing customer analytics as "analytics with training wheels" or as a way of developing skills within an organization, Dyche warned. Because once it starts getting done outside the organization, it's tougher to bring back in.

"You may have an exec who has a mini epiphany and says, 'We don't know what customers are saying; we need a project,'" Dyche said. "It may be a way to kick-start [a voice of the customer program], but it will take a really disciplined organization to bring those capabilities in-house -- not just gathering and measuring it, but bringing that data to broader places. Marketing needs that information; sales needs that information."

So what should companies consider if they do outsource their customer analytics?

Ament said organizations with significant regulatory and compliance requirements should be very careful about what they outsource. In addition, she said, consider short-term jobs, like monthly or quarterly projects when the price is right. Finally, she suggests that outsourcing can bring some order to what can be a chaotic process.

"Organizations are working harder than ever to capture and manage their information. They're doing reporting very dutifully, but they're not always using best practices in doing their reporting," Ament said. "So standardizing metrics is something most organization don't do well but a consultancy or an outsourced provider should."

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/2240015848/When-should-you-outsource-customer-analytics?

Vietnam - News and Regulations

FOREIGN INVESTMENT - Foreign capital still flowing into Vietnam

By the end of last week, total net buying of foreign investors in the HCM City Stock Exchange (Hose) in 20 consecutive days touched 1.482 trillion dong and many signs showed that they have not yet stopped buying.

In fact, in some trading sessions, transactions of foreign investors became the lead of the market and domestic investors followed. Amidst the context of weak domestic demand, such a move gave an impetus to the market to increase.

In January, in Hose, 152 out of 199 share codes (76.4 percent) were bought or sold by foreign investors, of which total net buying was 93 codes.

The highest net buying of foreign investors stopped at less than 150 billion dong and the lowest was several billion dong. Overall, the buying and selling difference of foreign investors was 567 billion dong.

In terms of value, foreign investors accounted for 7.3 percent of total buying volume and 5.6 percent of total selling volume. This demonstrated that although foreign investors reported net buying, domestic investors were really leading the market.

In February, the trading scope of foreign investors unexpectedly increased with total net buying of 706 billion dong/5 sessions. Particularly, the central attention was the mid-week session when foreign investors reported net buying at 231.6 billion dong, accounting for more than 20 percent of total order matching volume.

The trading moves of foreign investors were much observed by many securities companies.

Among the funds investing into Vietnam, there are two familiar faces, Dragon Capital and VinaCapital. However, over the last time, activities of the two funds have been relatively quiet because of modest amount of cash.

The report of Dragon Capital released on 21 January showed that two funds, VEIL and VGL, reported cash amount at only 2 - 4 percent compared with more or less than 10 percent several months ago. This rate at VOF Fund of VinaCapital over the last half of the year fluctuated around 13 - 14 percent. In fact, both Dragon Capital and VinaCapital are planning to establish new funds and call for more capital.

Funds that specialise in investing into emerging markets and regional funds do not make continuous investments into Vietnam's stock market over the last two years. However, in recent months, there have been some positive movements.

Firstly, a small fund established by the financial giant George Soros evinced his interest into Vietnam's stock market. Facing up the strong net buying trend of foreign investors in some sessions, people rumoured that the fund participated into the market with total capital of hundreds of millions of US dollars. In fact, in the middle of November last year, the fund's representative had a meeting with a big securities company and then met with many leading listed companies. The general director of the securities company where the fund intended to open an account said that up to this time, the fund has not applied for the trading code.

Some exchange trades funds (ETF) appeared in Vietnam in the last six months. The special features of ETF are creating an investment portfolio including a basket of shares representing VN Index or a group of some sector. Among such funds includes The Market Vector Vietnam ETF (coded VNM) established by Van Eck Global.

VNM listed in the US's stock exchange in mid-august, 2009, has invested into a portfolio of 28 listed companies in Vietnam's stock market. However, the initial capital of VNM was only $ 14 million, which is relatively low to cause impacts on the market.

A director of a securities company said that an ETF fund focused on portfolios of food sector which were disbursed several days ago. Another regional fund, after selling out investment portfolio at the end of 2008, returned to the market. Additionally, a member fund coming from EU attracted new capital and has just increased capital ownership ratios in some listed companies.

Global investment banks have promoted their operations in Vietnam's stock market since the end of 2006 when Vietnam entered into WTO. They have issued investment participating certificates (P-notes), which allow foreign investors to participate into the market without having to register transaction codes or directly put foothold in Vietnam's stock market.

Commenting on the net buying trend of foreign investors when the market is experiencing a quiet time, Johan Nyvene, general director of HSC Securities Co, said that there are two reasons for foreign investors to have such a move. Firstly, some long-term investors looked at basic factors, changes of the macro-economy in the upcoming months. Secondly, their capital scope is very large while liquidity of Vietnam's stock market is relatively changeable, so, foreign investors buy when the market goes down and sell when the market goes up.DTCHK

TRADE – WTO - Anti-dumping duties on footwear creating divisions among EU members

Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (STRATFOR) said that EU continued levying dumping duties on footwear imported from China and Vietnam for additional 15 months is creating divisions among EU members.

EU said that levying duties is an anti-dumping measure, which was the same reason cited in order to limit garment products imported from China that was well known as the underwear war in 2005. However, this time, EU finds it hard to say that the Chinese government's support for the footwear industry brings more benefits to China in the EU market than low labour costs do. This is a good reason for China to submit WTO a petition against EU.

Nevertheless, amidst the current recession context of EU, particularly, Spain, Portugal and Italy, the above move of EU seemed to come from the political factor. For example, in Spain, due to the crisis, the unemployment rate climbed up to nearly 20 percent. If the unemployment rate increases, particularly due to the competition from China, this would lead to negative responses from Spanish people.

The footwear industry is a relatively big industry in Spain, Portugal and Italy as well as new member of EU Rumania. According to the statistics in 2007, Italy had more than 10,000 footwear production companies, Spain over 4,000 and Portugal nearly 3.000. Footwear producers of these three countries employ about 350.000 labourers. However, this industry has gone down in recent decades due to competition from low-price footwear producers such as China. Since 1995, due to international competition, Italy lost about 5,000 footwear production companies.

EU made its decision without agreement from its members. Footwear import countries had primarily denied the proposal. However, the EU Commission persuaded that making such decision was to help producers have an opportunity during the crisis and EU members should work together to fight against non-member countries.

However, there was another impetus behind both the footwear war and the underwear war. The footwear and apparel production requires fewer skills but use large number of labourers and often is the first step toward modern industrialisation.

Thus, it seemed to be abnormal when EU economies, especially such developing countries as Italy, were so hard in protecting employment in the footwear sector. (In 2006, wages of the footwear industry in Spain accounted for only 0.8 percent of total wages of the production sector, Italy 1.7 percent and Portugal 3.6 percent).

EU economies, especially Italy, the hardest country in continuing levying duties, in fact were worried over intellectual property issue. In China, many manufacturers specialise imitating luxurious fashion products of EU, sometimes publicly. Thus, EU sent a message to China that if China fails to seriously prevent intellectual property violations, EU would continue levying duties against low-cost products.

The argument of EU also raises various questions for Vietnam that exported some $3.2 billion worth of footwear in the first three quarters of 2009, which, though, reducing by 14 percent against a year earlier. The Vietnamese economy is fast growing based on low cost, intensive labour and export. Although having small scope, Vietnam still produces more leather footwear than all other countries, including India and Brazil.

Vietnam, which is also a member of WTO, would also benefit if China's lawsuit succeeds. Currently, China is levied a duty rate of 16.5 percent while Vietnam is entitled to a duty rate of 9.7 percent. If WTO cancels all these duties, the playing field would be fairer and Vietnam would directly compete with China. Before EU decided to apply this duty, Vietnam's footwear industry estimated total revenue to increase by 15-20 percent in 2010. Furthermore, Vietnam's fast growth rate shows that Vietnam could find its own path in the global trade.CHINPHU

RENEWABLE ENERGIES - Vietnam considering large wind farm project

Vietnam is to carry out a feasibility study for the country's largest-ever wind energy project, a government official said Wednesday. Prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked the Ministry of Trade and Industry to complete a study of the project by May, said Ta Van Huong, head of the ministry's energy department.

The size of the project, slated for the central coastal province of Ninh Thuan, was not entirely clear.

Huong referred to a capacity of 120 megawatts, but Tran Viet Ngai, head of the Vietnam Energy Association, said the study would look at a project totalling 400 megawatts. The lead company would be the state-owned electric monopoly Electricity of Vietnam Group (EVN), but private companies could be involved.

Danish development assistance is to help finance the project, the official Vietnam News reported.

Ninh Thuan's provincial government has approved five private wind power projects already, but none have begun construction.

One of Ninh Thuan's projects, financed by the German wind-power company EAB Projektmanagement GmbH, suffered a blow in December when its Vietnamese chief executive was arrested for fraud.

Nguyen Xuan Thuy, head of EAB Vietwind Ltd, told police he had lied about having a doctorate in science and had fraudulently induced European investors to back the company.

Only one wind farm, in the south-central province of Binh Thuan, is currently functioning in Vietnam. Renewable Energy Vietnam JSC operates five turbines with a capacity of 7.5 megawatts and is scheduled to expand to 18 turbines and 18 megawatts by the end of the year.

Vietnam's 3,000 kilometres of coastline afford substantial wind power potential, and 8.6 percent of the country enjoys high-velocity winds.

But Ngai said wind power projects were being held back by low electricity prices. He estimated wind power costs about 12 cents per kilowatt hour to produce while price controls limit EVN to paying 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour on average.

Huong said his ministry would submit a draft decree on incentives for wind power to the government soon.DPA

RESOURCES - PVT to transport over 5.5m tonnes of crude oil for Dung Quat refinery

Up to now, Dung Quat oil refinery received over 2.4 million tonnes of crude oil, refined 2.3 million tonnes of petroleum types, and exported 1.6 million tonnes of petroleum products to the market.

From now until February 18, three crude oil tanker vessels of PV Trans (coded PVT) will transport 240,000 tonnes of crude oil from Viet Thanh Gulf to Dung Quat refinery.

2.3 million tonnes of refined petroleum products include 681,000 tonnes of A92, 600,000 tonnes of DO, 120,000 tonnes of LPG, 65,000 tonnes of A95, 60,000 tonnes of FO and 20,000 tonnes of Polypropylene.

As planned, in 2010, PV Trans will transport over 5.5 million tonnes of crude oil to Dung Quat refinery for processing.VNS

AVIATION - Foreign airlines to add flights to HCM City

Malaysia Airlines and All Nippon Airways (ANA) have conned the augmentation of their flights to HCM City from late March to cash in on a recovery of global air traffic demand this year.

Zuraidi Saisi, area manager of Malaysia Airlines in Vietnam, said this carrier in Malaysia would increase frequency on the Kuala Lumpur-HCM C route to 20 from the current flights a week.

We will fly thrice a day a day except Sunday between Kuala Lumpur and HCM City from March 29;' Saisi told the Daily on the phone yesterday, crediting the increase to expectations of a rebound in business and leisure air ~el between the two cities.

Malaysia Airlines also has daily vices between Kuala Lumpur in Hanoi, but Saisi said the carrier would add flights to HCM City only in, summer schedule as it saw more demand for air travel here than in the capital city of Vietnam.

Having recognised the untapped potential of this southern economic hub of Vietnam, ANA has decided to fly daily between Tokyo and HCM City in the summer schedule, or two more flights than the Japanese airline's current frequency.

ANA is planning to operate the two additional flights on Mondays and Thursdays to offer passengers more options to travel with the carrier between Narita and Tan' Son Nhat airports any day of the week.

ANA now uses Boeing B767-300 aircraft configured with more than 210 seats for the Tokyo-HCM City run, and sells the return fare valid within two weeks for this route from $509 including tax.

The airline announced the number of flights to HCM City as part of its international network expansion in anticipation of increased air travel. ANA said in a statement that 2010 would be a year of expansion for the carrier.

"Factors such as anticipated capacity increase at Tokyo's Haneda and Narita airports, the scheduled delivery of Boeing 787s, as well as Open Skies between Japan and the United States agreed in December 2009 will bring important business opportunities for ANA to expand;' the statement says.

ANA disclosed the increased frequency of flights to HCM City and other markets in the world after Japan Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection. Japan Airlines had to suspend its direct flight between Hanoi and Osaka on January 12 because of its restructuring plan to cope with financial woes.

Vietnam Airlines began to operate direct service between Hanoi and the Japanese city of Osaka on January 13 to replace the struggling Japan Airlines on the route and in a move to expand its network in the northeast Asian market.

Vietnam Airlines operates flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays on the new route, on which it previously had a code-share deal with the Japanese partner.

Hanoi-Osaka is the fourth direct route serviced by Vietnam Airlines from Hanoi to Japan and the seventh route by this national flag air carrier between Vietnam and Japan.

Vietnam Airlines operates more than 30 flights from Hanoi and HCM City to Japan each week, including 11 a week to Tokyo, 12 to Osaka, four to Nagoya and four to Fukuoka.SGTD

REAL ESTATE - Office for lease market to welcome new supply

Finding and selecting advantageous and good locations with professional services for setting up working offices or headquarters are always one of the most important tasks of companies.

In recent years, many foreign groups as well as newly established firms decided to join Vietnamese market and a line-up of businesses want to expand offices so the demand for bigger office area is increasing dramatically, which has promoted the continuous development of office-for-lease market. Customers have many options to select offices graded A, B or C. In 2007, the Grade A office rental reached $60 per sqm a month. Between 2008 and 2009, the office market saw a gloomy sale because many enterprises were propelled to narrow business and production scope or go under bankruptcy.

Average rental of all offices was common at $29/sqm/month, up about 4.5 percent quarter on quarter. However, the rental of offices Grade A and B slumped to the lowest level in last five quarters. Against 2009 early, the office rental in last months recovered slightly.

The office-for-lease market prospect in 2010 seems to be more optimistic thanks to Vietnam's economic growth reached 5.32 percent in 2009. Foreign firms are coming back to Vietnam while domestic companies are expanding business. High class office buildings are estimated to operate sustainably in some next years.

In next four years, extra 1.5 million sqm of offices from about 100 projects will be supplied to the market, including 170,000 sqm of new offices in 2010 alone.DDDN

TELECOM - Viettel plans to launch 3G next month

The military-run telecom company Viettel plans to launch third generation network services in March to be the third provider in the country after VinaPhone and MobiFone.

Tran Minh Huy, director of Vitter's HCM City branch, told the Daily yesterday that Viettel would commercialise 3G service after the trial of the service in over 20 provinces.

"The pilot runs smoothly and makes us confident to launch the service in March;' Huy said.

According to Huy, Viettel will offer video call, mobile broadband 3G, TV mobile and video on demand, online music and clip service at reasonable charges.

Huy did not reveal specific charges for 3G but said Viettel would offer a reasonable pricing policy to customers. To develop a 3G network covering the country, Viettel plans to build 100,000 3G base transceiver stations this year.

Last year, Viettel's total revenue reached 60 trillion dong, increasing by 80 percent compared to 2008.

Huy forecast the telecom market would be upbeat because of 3G launching which would bring more values to providers as well as customers.

"2010 will see strong growth in the telecom market when many providers offer 3G services. It is a driving force to create more added values to telecom companies;' he said.

Industry insiders say 3G is a new element to further develop in Vietnam's mobile market.

However, UK-based market monitor BMI recently said in its Vietnam telecom report for the first quarter of 2010 that it only saw a minimum contribution of 3G services to the local telecom market.

According to the market researcher, Vietnam has around 100,000 3G service subscribers. The small number is blamed on the early days of 3G commercialisation at the end of2009. The researcher explains that cost and availability of 3G compatible handsets are expected to be main obstacles to 3G growth in the early years. BMI predicts 4.5 million 3G customers by the end of 2013, equal to 2 percent of the total mobile user base.

Although BMI says the market contains unsustainable elements, telecom providers showed impressive turnover in 2009. At the end of 2009, the Ministry of Information and Communications reported that Vietnam's telecom market had reached 150 trillion dong, increasing 62 percent compared to 2008.SGTD

By Geoffrey James

February 9th, 2010 @ 5:30 am

, Key, Behavior, Follow-through, Sales Strategy, Sales Force Management

Want to double, and then redouble, your sales revenue? Believe it or not, that’s not just possible… it’s easy.

Turns out that sales pipelines are like compound interest. Small increases in efficiency, applied simultaneously at different points in the sales cycle, result in geometric increases in final sales results.

Here are five easy steps that can easily be implemented within a single quarter. Any one of these steps will probably double your sales revenue. But if you implement all five at once — Bingo! — you’ll achieve exponentially higher sales revenue – quarter after quarter.

BTW, these steps are based on a discussion with one of my favorite sales geniuses: Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group.

Step #1: Increase the average quality of the leads

• The Concept: If you’re calling on the wrong people, you’re spending time on “opportunities” that never had a chance. If your leads are higher quality, you’re less likely to be calling on the wrong people. Therefore, your sales activities will generate more sales in the same period of time.
• The Challenge: A high quality lead, by definition, is one that’s highly likely to become a customer. Your challenge is therefore to come up with a specific definition of what constitutes a high quality lead for your offering, and then get the marketing organizations focused on finding more of them.
• The Key: A marketing group cannot possibly create a useful profile of a high quality lead without the active participation of the sales group. The sales team must therefore provide them with regular, direct inputs who’s interested and who’s buying, along with all the specific details (like job title, industry, typical organizational structure, etc.),
• The Behavior: Once the initial profile is agreed-upon, the Marketing group must commit to generating, and nurturing, leads that correspond to that profile. To do so, they should be given online tools that allow them to mine social networks and business databases to find individuals that are likely to be interested, inside companies that have the money to buy the offering.
• The Follow-through: The sales team should commit to keeping the CRM database current and accurate. Because the CRM system tracks sales efforts, it can provide the marketing group with a treasure-trove of statistical data defining the current customer base and how effective the sales organization has been when selling to those demographics.

Step #2: Decrease the percentage of false opportunities.

• The Concept: Even if you’re calling on high qualities leads, a certain percentage of them won’t be potential prospects, usually because they don’t really have a need for your offering, or they do have a need, but no money to buy. Eliminating these “opportunities” from your sales cycle, means that you’ll spend more time with real ones.
• The Challenge: You must realign your thinking so that your initial conversations with a sales leads are not for the purpose of selling, but rather to identify which leads are most likely to become customers — and which are least likely. Then you make sure that only the most likely prospects are put into your pipeline, so that you seldom, if ever, waste time on false prospects.
• The Key: The key issue is always value. First, the “prospect” must have the budget to buy, or at least some budget dollars that could be spent, if the need is great enough. Second, the prospect must have that need, and the need must have a financial impact that’s overwhelming larger than the cost of your offering. Anything less, and you’ll never be a priority.
• The Behavior: The initial conversation with a sales lead must be peppered with questions can disqualify the prospect as a potential customer. For example: a question like “how would you handle this problem if you didn’t have a solution like ours?” might elicit a response like “we’d probably struggle along for a few more years” in which case the prospect may not be serious about buying.
• The Follow-Through: Sales management must treat the elimination of a lead from your list as much a victory as the conversion of the lead into a real prospect. If you don’t compensate and celebrate the winnowing process and only celebrate when you find a real prospect, you’ll start sneaking questionable prospects into the pipeline.

Step #3: Increase your average competitive close rate.

• The Concept: Even if you’re calling on the right people, if you do or say the wrong things, you’ll spend time and money on opportunities that don’t pay off. Once a lead is completely qualified as a prospect, then the prospect is going to buy, either from you or your competitor. Therefore, increasing your “conversion rate” for a fully qualified lead is always matter of outselling the competition.
• The Challenge: The most frequent reason sales reps are outsold is that they didn’t talk to the right people - and the competitor did. In many cases, the failing sales rep failed to research and completely understand the actually process by which the decision would be made, and who would play what role in that decision-making process.
• The Key: It’s common practice for sales reps to communicate with a senior decision-maker at the beginning of the sales cycle, and then revisit that connection at the end of the sales cycle, in order get final approval. However, if your contacts are limited during the middle of the sales cycle, you’re probably not going to know what your competitor is doing, and who your competitor is calling upon.
• The Behavior: Insist upon being in regular communication with decision-makers, so that there won’t belong periods of time where you don’t know what’s going on, or what’s changing inside the customer account. And don’t be afraid to ask your contacts who else is calling on them. It’s probably not a big secret and (guess what?) your competitor is probably asking them about YOU!
• The Follow-Through: Selling against competitors means constantly differentiating your offering so that it fits the prospect’s need better than whatever the competitor is offering. To do this, you must deeply research the prospect’s business and the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, versus your own. Remember to be subtle, though. Rubbishing the other guy makes you look bad.

Step #4: Increase the average dollar value of each sale.

• The Concept: There is a fixed amount of time and resources connected to every sales effort. While it may take more effort to cut a $1 million deal, it’s usually not nearly ten times as much as effort as cutting a $100,000 deal. Therefore, the more money that you can make on each sales opportunity, the more you’ll make overall.
• The Challenge: You must fully develop the customer account during the sales process. This means giving each account your full attention, and spending enough time on it to be able to uncover the full opportunity. Fortunately, this will be easier to do if you’re implementing the first three steps, because then you’ll be selling to fewer prospects, but with a better chance of making the sale.
• The Behavior: Research the prospect thoroughly, prior to your first sales call, and then continue to research and probe during the sales cycle in order to continue to uncover additional ways that your firm can help that customer. Make this a constant element of your sales process.
• The Key: Remember that you’re not trying to pump up the sales price, but to truly be of service to the customer. Your entire attitude, from start to finish, MUST be can result in a proactive collaboration, between you and your customer contacts, to make sure that the (mutually advantageous) deal is as large as possible. That way you’re helping them even more.
• The Follow-Through: Always use discounts as sparingly as possible. In the case of standard discounts, that drop in margin is already reflected in the business model. However, extraordinary discounts offered merely to secure the sale, can not only make the current deal smaller, but (if publicized) can result in discounts (and smaller deals) from future customers.

Step #5: Decrease the average sales cycle time.

• The Concept: The more time that you spend on an opportunity, the less time you have to spend on other opportunities. There are two types of “time” that are at issue. The first is the elapsed time that it takes to move a prospect from initial contact to closing the deal. The second is the work-hours that you actually spend on that opportunity.
• The Challenge: Most sales reps focus on the elapsed time, believing that they can influence the customer to buy more quickly. However, in most cases, the customer already has a time frame in which they intend to buy. Because of this, efforts to “speed the process along” are usually a waste of time. As such, they add to the number of work hours that the rep spends on the account, with no particular payback.
• The Key: Focus instead on the “work-hours” that you spend on each account. Find ways to make your interactions with each customer more intense and more productive. Schedule multiple meetings on a single visit. Use web-conferencing to reach remote individuals. Don’t reduce the amount of service you’re providing; just find a way to spend fewer work-hours doing it.
• The Behavior: Focus on discovering the customer’s “compelling event” which will actually trigger the buying process. For example, a prospect might have a certain amount of budget to spend in the current quarter, in which case the “compelling event” would be the end of the quarter - after which the money will disappear. Similarly, a prospect might be waiting for an order from a large customer before making a purchase of additional component.
• The Follow-Through: Once you know the compelling event, then you schedule your activities backwards from that event, so that you spend the right amount of time (neither more nor less) developing the opportunity. If done correctly, you can ensure that every moment that spend with the prospect (soon to be customer) is productive.

THE BIG PAYOFF!!!

Here’s how these five steps geometrically increase sales, when implemented simultaneously. I’ll keep it simple.

Suppose you spend 1 day a week prospecting and 4 weeks a day selling. Your prospecting results in 10 prospects, of which 2 turn into customers by the end of the week. You spent 1 day of time to secure each customer, and 2 days of time on the other 8 customers who didn’t buy. Each of those two customers spend $10,000 each. Your commission is 10%, so you just made $2,000 in that week.

Now suppose you implement the changes above, and still keep to the same basic schedule. Your 1 day a week of prospecting still results in 10 prospects, but they’re all highly qualified. Because you’re spending less time on each customer, spend 1/2 day each, to close 6 customers, while 2 fall by the wayside. Each of those 6 customers spend an average of $15,000. Your commission is still 10%, so you just made $9,000, which is geometrically more than what you made before — for the exact same amount of time and effort!

Cool, eh?

Hey, if you thought this post was useful, click the “thumbs-up” button at the top of the post!

BTW: The TAS Group has a much more sophisticated model (called “Sales Velocity”) that can really help improve the performance of an entire sales team. If you’re interested, I strongly suggest you contact them directly.

http://blogs.bnet.com/salesmachine/?p=8188&tag=col1;post-8188

Five Rules for Effective Cold-Calling

By Geoffrey James

February 8th, 2010 @ 11:30 am

, Geoffrey James

Cold-calling is always a challenge. Here are five rules to help you make the process as productive as possible:

• RULE #1. Know your target. Based upon your previous sales rates, figure out how many prospects you need in order to generate the number of sales needed to fulfill your quota. For example, if you must generate five sales a week to make quota, and on average you typically close one out of five prospects, you will need to convert 25 leads into prospects every week.
• RULE #2. Know your timeline. Based upon your previous experience, estimate the amount of time it will take to convert those leads prospects. For example, if you typically convert 1 out of 10 leads into prospects and you need 25 prospects a week, you’ll need to call 250 suspects every week. If it takes you, on average, 2 minutes to qualify a lead, you’ll need to spend 8 hours a week making qualifying calls.
• RULE #3: Know your purpose. Cold calls are for prospecting and qualifying leads. They are NOT selling calls. Unless the suspect, of his or her own accord, brings up a desire to purchase, do not go into your sales pitch. In most cases, your goal is to get a meeting with the suspect thereby transforming the suspect into a prospect. Don’t overreach.
• RULE #4. Know your script. Based upon your experience or the experience of your peers and manager, define a conversational way to ask, during an initial conversation, whether or not the suspect has a budget, authority to spend the budget, and a need for your offering. If you need help with this, check out: “The Ultimate Prospect Qualification Tool.”
• RULE #5. Know thyself. Lead qualification requires you operate at peak performance. Think of yourself as a top athlete who must win, even on days when you don’t start out feeling confident and together. Do whatever it takes to get yourself in an up and positive mood. Focus on what motivates you and why you want to win this business.

BTW: These rules are based on a conversation with his article is based on a conversation with Thomas Ray Crowel, author of “Simple Selling: Common Sense That Guarantees Your Success.”

http://blogs.bnet.com/salesmachine/?p=8233&tag=nl.e808

Vietnam - News and Regulations

POWER - MoF proposes to hike electricity price by 6.8pct or 10.7pct Ministry of Finance's Price Management Department has proposed the government to raise the electricity price by 10.7 percent or 6.8 percent from the current average level of 970.9 dong/kWh. The plan of raising 10.7 percent is based on the coal price adjustment. As estimated, the extra cost each household has to pay is 5,000-10,000 dong/month depending on the usage levels of below 50 kWh and over 50 kWh. As for the second plan with 6.8 percent increase, the additional cost for electricity of each household will be 5,000-8,600 dong/month.LD

	RESOURCES - Vietnam's second refinery, Nghi Son Vietnam's largest oil refinery, the planned $8 billion, 200,000 barrel-per-day Nghi Son plant, will hold an international tender to pick a lead contractor, a state-run newspaper reported on Wednesday. Once completed in late 2013, Nghi Son and the 140,000-bpd Dung Quat, the country's first refinery, are forecast to meet 80 percent of domestic demand for oil products. [ID:nHAN465440] Vietnam aims to be self-sufficient in oil products by 2015, with the completion of Nghi Son and the 240,000-bpd Long Son refinery to be built by 2014 in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. REUTERS

WTO TRADE - Vietnam tackles US at WTO over shrimp imports

Vietnam has launched its first dispute at the World Trade Organisation with a case against US anti-dumping measures on its key exports of shrimp.

The country only joined the global trade arbiter three years ago, and its economy like China's has benefited strongly from membership in the world trading system and its rules.

The trade dispute with the United States not only has symbolic significance but defends a product that brought in some $1.5 billion in exports last year.

It also pits Hanoi against a large number of Vietnamese-American shrimpers who operate off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

No one was available for comment at Vietnam's mission to the WTO, and details of the dispute were not immediately clear.

Vietnamese shrimp exporters currently face US anti-dumping duties ranging from zero to about 26 percent.

They have complained in the past about the controversial US method of calculating anti-dumping duties known as zeroing, which has been condemned repeatedly by WTO courts and rejected by all other WTO members.

"The WTO has concluded that the US was wrong in applying the zeroing method in precedent cases. I can see high possibility of Vietnam winning the case," Nguyen Huu Dung, deputy chair of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), told the VietNamNet website last year.

Vietnam will also gain useful experience in international trade litigation from fighting a WTO case, Dung said.

According to documents filed by Vietnam with the WTO, Vietnam is seeking consultations with the United States – the first formal stage in a dispute.

A spokeswoman for the US Trade Representative's office said they were reviewing Vietnam's request for talks, but provided no further information.

If the two sides fail to resolve the dispute through bilateral consultations in 60 days, Vietnam can ask the WTO to set up a panel to rule on the case.

Plummeting prices

VASEP estimates Vietnam exported 190,000 tonnes of shrimp in 2009, up 7 percent in volume and 1 percent in value. Besides the US, the main markets include Japan, South Korea, China and the European Union.

The Southern Shrimp Alliance, which represents shrimp fishermen and processors in eight US states, won anti-dumping duties on imports from Brazil, China, Ecuador, India, Thailand and Vietnam in 2004 after a US Commerce Department investigation found those countries guilty of unfair pricing practices.

That action helped stabilise an industry hit hard by plummeting prices. But annual US administrative reviews have weakened the duties over the years and US shrimpers are now struggling with historically low prices, the group's executive director, John Williams, told Reuters.

US duties on shrimp from Thailand had such little effect that the Southern Shrimp Alliance recently negotiated a deal for the Thai shrimp industry to pay US shrimpers at least $100 million to have the duties dropped, Williams said.

However, that agreement is opposed by a rival US group, the American Shrimp Processors Association, which is urging the Commerce Department to block it, he said.VNS

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT - Hitachi focuses on producing elevators, escalators in Vietnam

The Asian Hitachi Group plans to expand production scale for producing elevators and escalators in Vietnam in 2010, after officially started this business line in September 2008, Shigeki Akamatsu, the group's chief representative in Vietnam.

He also said that Hitachi would hand over 10 sets of elevators and escalators for the trade centres that have been under construction at present in Vietnam within this month. It was considered the group's strategy to develop this business scope in Vietnam because recently, the amount of construction projects in this sector has increased significantly.

The finished products of elevators and escalators offered by Hitachi Group has been used in large construction projects in Asian region and Middle East such as Changi International Airport in Singapore, Atlantis hotel system in United Arab Emirates, and China-based Shanghai International Financial Centre.

In the coming time, Hitachi will put into operation the electric cable factory in Vietnam. At present, the group has two representative offices and one manufacturing factory in Vietnam, serving in various sectors from household electronic equipment to those used in industrial sector.

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TRADE - Siemens sees success in Vietnam

Vietnam is Siemens most successful market in the region, said president of the world's leading electrical and electronic company in Vietnam.

Despite the thumping the international economic crisis gave markets around the globe, the Germany-based giant retained high growth in Vietnam last year, said Erdal Elver, though official 2009 statistics have not been released yet.

Elver told Thanh Nien Weekly that Siemens gained more orders from local customers than previous years and orders to supply major energy projects and a metro rail system in HCM City counted for 477 million euros on the Vietnamese market in fiscal 2007 and 2008.

"We hope the growth will continue this year," said the president, adding that Siemens had just received a trading license in Vietnam.

The president said the amended license meant the behemoth company could now trade directly with customers in Vietnam instead of via its headquarters in Germany.

He added that Siemens would focus on its products businesses, which grew rapidly in sales last year. He said health care products would be its focus investment target this year as the sector offered strong demand from hospitals and health institutes in 2009.THNHNEWS

ENERGY - Vietnam heeds world call to conserve energy

Dwellers in 20 cities across Vietnam are likely to turn off home lights and unnecessary electric equipment for at least an hour on March 27 in response to Earth Hour, a worldwide call to save energy, the Vietnam news agency said Thursday.

This was confirmed by the World Wide Fund for Nature in Vietnam (WWF Vietnam) and the Department of Hydrometeorology and Climate Change of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in a press briefing.

According to the agencies, the Earth Hour programme this year is being expanded in Vietnam, with 20 cities joining the campaign in comparison with six last year.

The state-owned Electricity of Vietnam corporation (EVN) will officially take part in the programme as one of the major sponsors and ambassadors of the programme.

As one of the five countries to be hardest hit by climate change, Vietnam needs to take action and make strong commitment so as to have a stronger voice in the international arena on emission reduction issues, said WWF Vietnam director Tran Minh Hien.

First launched in Sydney, Australia in 2007, Earth Hour, an initiative on climate change spearheaded by the WWF--has received a worldwide response. Last year, the campaign involved nearly one billion citizens in over 4,000 cities in 88 countries.VNS

According to EVN deputy general director Nguyen Manh Hung, the state electricity group will take the occasion to promote the government's energy saving programme.

It will prepare technical information on how to use energy most safely and efficiently for awareness-raising handouts to be disseminated among schools and enterprises.