Viet Nam win gold at Asian chess event | Look At Vietnam

Viet Nam win gold at Asian chess event

May 23, 2012

Photo for illustration.

LookAtVietnam – Viet Nam’s men’s chess team have won a gold medal in the blitz event at the ongoing Asian Team Chess Championships in China.
Le Quang Liem, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, Dao Thien Hai, Nguyen Duc Hoa, Nguyen Huynh Minh Huy performed outstandingly to finish with eight wins and one draw to take the title.
They defeated strong rivals from China, India, Mongolia, Iran, Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Singapore and South Korea.
The women’s team also enjoyed success, taking the silver medal in the rapid chess event with six wins, one draw and two losses.
The event will finish next Monday.
VietNamNet/Viet Nam News

4,000 ton gold treasure

Binh Thuan authorities license man to search 4,000-ton-gold treasure

October 17, 2011  about Uncategorized

LookAtVietnam - Binh Thuan province has permitted Mr. Tran Van Tiep, 96, to search for “treasure” on Tau Mountain for 270 days.

Tran Van Tiep (right) has been
hunting down the treasure for a half of his life.

“Mr. Tiep is allowed to make exploration from October 10, within nine months, and he has to mortgage VND500 million ($25,000),” an official from the Binh Thuan People’s Committee said.
Mr. Tiep can search for the treasure on an area of 2,400sq.m, using drill machines. However the drilling depth is fixed at 35m maximum.
The local authorities also ask Mr. Tiep to carry out measures to prevent environmental pollution and the $25,000 is mortgage.
The man must report the searching result to the local authorities after the search is complete.
The search will be supervised by a working group, which is led by Nguyen Ngoc Hanh, deputy director of the Binh Thuan Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Tiep strongly believes that there is a 4,000-ton gold treasure on Tau Mountain, which was buried by Japanese army. Since 1993, he has invested a billion dong to search for the treasure.
PV

Billions dollar worth of jewelries exported to Switzerland | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Billions dollar worth of jewelries exported to Switzerland | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update: "VietNamNet Bridge –

Billions dollar worth of high-grade jewelries have been exported in the last

two years from Vietnam to Switzerland,

where the jewelries are smelted to get gold.

The Financial

Times has reported that there has been a growing tendency over the past two

years that Vietnamese businessmen have been trying to export high-grade gold

jewelry to Switzerland

as a trick to “dodge” the current laws which prohibits bullion gold exports.

In Switzerland,

the jewelries are smelted and then cast into bullion gold. Vietnamese

businessmen want to export jewelry to Switzerland

because the country in the north of Europe is

famous for the smelting industry which can turn all gold-made products into

gold bullions with international standards.

Statistics

showed that before 2008, Vietnam

only exported a small amount of gold of 3.2 tons of jewelry to Switzerland,

earning 71 million francs or 77.5 million dollars. However, things have changed

in the last two years, as Vietnam

has become a big source of imported gold products for Switzerland.

Most of the jewelry from Vietnam

has come to the furnaces of big manufacturers such as Argor-Heraeus, Metalor,

MKS Finance and Valcambi.

The newspaper

has quoted Cameron Alexander, a senior analyst of GFMS precious metals

consultancy as saying that in Vietnam, enterprises are not allowed to export

high grade bullion gold. The ban has prompted Vietnamese enterprises to process

bullion gold into jewelry with high title of gold and export the jewelryfor

dollars. The problem is that Vietnam

prohibits businessmen from exporting bullion gold, but does not prohibit them

from exporting jewelry. This is a big loophole of the laws and many businessmen

have exploited it.

In 2010

alone, Vietnam exported

nearly 61 tons of precious metals to Switzerland, mostly under the mode

of gold-made products, reaping 2.6 billion francs, or 2.8 billion dollars,

according to the Swiss Federal Customs Administration. The figures were 54 tons

and 1.9 billion francs in 2009 (the figures do not include the exports of

bullion gold). Especially, the exports to Switzerland

increased sharply a few times when the gold prices in Vietnam were

lower than the prices in the world market.

Local

newspaper VnExpress has quoted a representative from an enterprise which is a

member of the Vietnam Gold Business Association, as saying that “Vietnamese enterprises

have to take a roundabout to export gold, when the domestic prices are much

lower than the world’s prices”. The executive said that in 2009 and 2010,

enterprises must be granted quotas to be able to export bullion gold.

Meanwhile, quotas were granted a few times and with limited export volumes.

Therefore, enterprises decided to export jewelry because it was much easier to

export jewelry, while the exports were not imposed tax. And the enterprises

turned bullion gold into jewelry to export.

The

executive has revealed that Swiss importers pay for the jewelry the same prices

as they pay for bullion gold. “As such, exporters could not earn money for the

processing into jewelry. However, they still could earn fat profit, when the

domestic prices were lower than the world’s prices,” he said.

“The strict

control over the gold exports has forced enterprises to play such a trick,” he

added.

In Vietnam,

bullion gold is considered “monetary gold”, therefore, the government has

decided that bullion gold imports and exports must be strictly controlled and

have quotas.

He also

said that he knew a gold company which exported 7-8 tons of jewelry at once in

2009-2010, and that he thinks the statistics released by the Swiss agency can

truly reflect the real exports.

In fact,

Vietnamese management agencies have realized that enterprises played tricks to

circumvent the laws. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance decided to impose the

tax rate of 10 percent, starting from January 1, 2011, on material gold and

high grade jewelry instead of the zero tax rate that was previously applied.

According to the General Department of Customs, in 2010, Vietnam imported 1.1

billion dollars worth of precious stones, precious metals and products, an

increase of 124.7 percent over the last year. Meanwhile, Vietnam exported 2.82

billion dollars worth of products, up by 3.4 percent. Meanwhile in 2009, the

export turnover of the products was 2.73 billion dollars, while the import

turnover was modest at 492.1 million dollars.

Source:

VnExpress

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Sitting on mounts of gold, why is Vietnam still poor? | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

LookAtVietnam -
That is the question that Dr. Vu Minh Khuong, a lecturer at the National
Singapore University, has received from many Singaporeans.

 

They said Singapore
has only one seaport and one Sentosa Island while Vietnam has many seaports and many
beautiful islands like Phu Quoc, Ha Long, Van Phong, etc. but it is listed
among countries with low average per capita income and low competitiveness.

This question is difficult for Singaporeans but it is not
difficult for those who understand Vietnam.

Dr. Khuong said that Vietnam
has a large potential for development but Vietnam doesn’t know where it
should focus.

According to Khuong,
Vietnam’s case
is like that of a man who is very versatile, who can play music very well and
can also draw nice paintings. With so many talents, he sometimes does
scientific research, other times plays music and then draws paintings and in
the end he doesn’t become a scientist nor a musician nor a painter.

For example, Quang Ninh province in northern Vietnam
has Ha Long Bay and abundant reserves of coal. The province both explores coal
and develops tourism but coal exploration harms the Ha Long Bay’s
natural environment.

Tourism development in Quang Ninh, sadly, focuses on
attracting large numbers of visitors, who however don’t spend much money there.

Quang Ninh is not the only one example in Vietnam. Provinces in the Red River
Delta are wondering how to explore the giant coal reserves under their rice
granary, which is the dream of many countries in the current context, when food
security is the top priority.

Local governments in Vietnam are striving for high
growth rates and industrlisation, not thinking about the advantages they
already have. Their development plans are all similar. And this means that they
lose their competitiveness.

Let’s look at the seaport development in Vietnam. All coastal provinces in Vietnam
want to have their own seaports. In the next ten years, Vietnam will build up to 39
seaports, with 108 wharves. Is it good? The more seaports there are, the less
goods each seaports will service, which in turn, means higher costs.

In the US,
there are only three major seaports along the 1900km-long western coast.

Vietnam
seems to forget Malaysia’s
lesson of seaports development. Prior to the 1970s, it had only two big ports.
The government decided to build four more national and three domestic ports,
resulting in the redundancy of seaports and severe competition among them.

With a strategic position and a long coast, Vietnam has the advantages to become an
international transit center but will Vietnam take the chance?

There was a time when all provinces and cities tried to have
their own sugar and cement plants and now they are racing to have their own
steel plants and seaports, which are all small.

Vietnam
currently doesn’t have an international transit container seaport. It has some
international ports like Saigon, Da Nang and Hai Phong, which can host big
vessels but their services don’t meet the demand, service charges are high and
the customs clearance duration is long (3-7 days on average compared to 10
minutes in Singapore). There is no adequate investment in the railway and road
networks connected with these ports. Infrastructural facilities are poor.

Experts mention a story which is shows how regional
interests hindering the overall development:

The Cai Mep-Thi Vai seaport in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau welcomed big foreign
cargo ships. In every aspect, this port was suitable to become an international
transit port. However, HCM
City and Long An also
wanted to turn their ports into international transit ports while there was a
shortage of capital.

Attracting foreign investment is another area, which can
partly answer the question why Vietnam
doesn’t become rich though it “sits” on mounts of gold.

Though the country has a common policy on foreign investment
but to lure investors, many provinces and cities have broken the rules, by
offering many more incentives.

A survey by the Ministry of Finance at 48 provinces and
cities in 2006 revealed that up to 32 provinces issued illegal documents, which
offered special incentives for investors and 11 provinces violated the
regulations on corporate income tax.

The race to attract foreign investment among provinces
harmsthe national economy. This is the race to the “bottom”.

“Instead of competition, cooperation and combination among
provinces and sectors must be encouraged,” advised Professor Michael Porter.

Vietnam
should seriously consider its position in the global economy at present and
define its advantages that can make its name in the world.

Phuong Loan