On April 18, 2018, the Government issued Decree No.58/2018/ND-CP on agricultural insurance. The Decree took effect since June 5, 2018.
Accordingly, Decree No.58/2018/ND-CP regulates the type of risk supported by agricultural insurance and the level of support as follows:
1. The type of risk supported by insurance includes:
– Natural disaster: natural disaster must be announced or certified by competent state agencies;
– Disease: Animal disease or plant pests. The disease must be announced or certified by competent state agencies.
2. Level of agricultural insurance support
– Individuals engaged in agricultural production belong to poor or near poor households: To support up to 90% of agricultural insurance premiums.
– Individuals engaged in agricultural production not being poor or near poor households: To support up to 20% of agricultural insurance premiums.
– Organizations engaged in agricultural production in the model of cooperation, integration, large-scale production and application of advanced science and technology to production towards clean agriculture, high technology, friendly environment: To support up to 20% of agricultural insurance premiums.
With detailed and specific regulations, it can be seen that Decree No.58/2018/ND-CP aims to ensure the benefits and welfare of people working in the agricultural sector, thereby stabilizing the person life and promoting the sustainable development of agriculture.

At a conference in Hanoi, on May 15, on the Vietnamese economy’s outlook for 2018 and to 2020, Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung highlighted the good socio-economic performance in the first months of 2018, especially the GDP growth of 7.38%, the highest rise in a first quarter in 10 years. The macro-economy was kept stable, and inflation was under control.

The average consumer price index (CPI) in the first four months of 2018 rose 2.8%. The monetary market and the banking system remained stable with the system’s liquidity ensured, he said.

The Minister added that disbursement of foreign direct investment was estimated at US$5.1 billion, up 6.3%. The number of newly-established enterprises was over 41,200, with combined capital of approximately VND 412 trillion.

Total import-export revenue in the period was estimated to hit US$73.76 billion, a rise of 19% annually, with a trade surplus of roughly US$3.39 billion.

President of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises (VAFIE) Nguyen Mai held that foreign investment (FDI) has played an important role in the Vietnamese economy. Last year, the FDI disbursement reached a record figure of US$17.5 billion. He predicted that FDI disbursement this year may hit US$19 billion.

Meanwhile, Warrick Cleine, President and General Director of KPMG Vietnam asserted that foreign investors are becoming more confident in the Vietnamese economy. A number of forecasts by international organisations put the country’s average GDP growth in the 2018-2020 at around 6.85% and even 7% in some years.

However, Minister Dung said the Vietnamese Government has been highly aware of the possible impacts by the economy’s internal problems and outside influence.

The country aims for fast and sustainable economic growth on the basis of making full use of humankind’s science-technology advances, especially from the 4.0 industrial revolution, towards the goal of a modern industrialised country with an advanced market economy.

Minister Dung also highlighted the need for the joint efforts of all sectors at every level, as well as all economic players, in maintaining the growth trend not only in 2018 but also in the following years.

Source: nhandanonline

According to the Bloomberg news, the large corporations as Samsung, Intel have poured money into the factories in Vietnam leading Southeast Asian countries to emerge as new tiger in Asia. After renovation in the 1980s, Vietnam’s economy has grown rapidly, exceeding 7% before leveling off in recent years due to the increase in bad debt from the state sector.

Not only is the Southeast Asian nation gaining ground as a cheaper manufacturing alternative to neighboring China, Vietnam is also a politically palatable destination for Japanese firms boosting investment in the region amid recurring China-Japan spats.

“It is quite possible that Vietnam could become the fastest-growing economy in Asia,” said Vikram Nehru, a senior associate in the Asia Program and Bakrie Chair in Southeast Asian Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “It has all the ingredients for rapid growth if it can address the challenges in the state sector.”

Mekong Star

Signs of Vietnam’s growing clout are gathering: In 2014 the country overtook regional counterparts to become the biggest exporter to the US from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, muscling ahead of its more established manufacturing rivals of Thailand and Malaysia.

Disbursed foreign investment in Vietnam has soared in the past 14 years to reach US$12.35 billion in 2014, up 7.4 % from 2013 and compared with US$2.4 billion in 2000, figures from the Foreign Investment Agency show. Samsung’s operations in the country are growing so big that it got government approval to operate its own terminal at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport.

And manufacturers are shifting from China. Japanese printer maker Kyocera Document Solutions Inc., a unit of Kyocera Corp., plans to quadruple its annual printer production in Vietnam to 2 million units by March 2018, the company said this month. Part of its operation in China will be moved to Hai Phong, making Vietnam the company’s biggest manufacturing base for printers, with another plant planned by August, it said.

“Vietnam will displace Thailand as the greater Mekong star,” said Tim Condon, head of Asia research at ING Groep NV, referring to the Mekong River basin region that includes the nations of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, along with China’s Yunnan province.

Exports from Thailand, one of the nations dubbed by analysts and the media as a rapidly developing tiger economy before the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, have contracted in the last two years. By contrast, Vietnam in 2014 saw its shipments overseas jump almost 14 %.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. this month upgraded Vietnam’s GDP forecast to 6.5 % for this year and next, citing strengthening retail sales, accelerating industrial production and improving construction. “The economy’s structure is shifting, it is moving from agriculture to manufacturing,” said Victoria Kwakwa, the World Bank’s country director for Vietnam. “You can see there is a progression happening.”

‘Big Winner’

“Vietnam is really the big winner from China losing its competitiveness because of rising wages” and a strong currency, said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics research in Hong Kong at HSBC Holdings Plc. “By moving very early into the space vacated by China, Vietnam has first-mover advantage and it is now starting to show.”

Vietnam’s annual real gross domestic product growth could average 5.3 % in the 2014-50 period, a pace only bettered by Nigeria, according to PwC’s “The World in 2050” report. Growth in China may fall below 4 %. Vietnam’s benchmark stock index has climbed 5.5 % this year, compared with Indonesia’s 4.1 % increase, Malaysia’s 2.4 % and Thailand’s 2.2 %.

Demographics are a big help. Some 13 % of China’s population in 2012 was already 60 or older, compared with 9 % in Vietnam, according to the United Nations. More than 40 % of Vietnam’s population of about 90 million in 2013 was in the labor force aged 15 to 49, government data show.

The average monthly wage in Vietnam was US$197 in 2013 compared with US$391 for Thailand and US$613 for China, according to International Labour Organization calculations. That disparity is widening. The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts that in 2019, manufacturing labor costs per hour in China will be 177 % of those in Vietnam, up from 147 % in 2012.

Bad Loans

John Hawksworth, one of the authors of the PwC report, said that lenders in Vietnam are creaking under bad loans, and the government has struggled to overhaul inefficient state-owned companies. Inadequate infrastructure, skills gaps and corruption remain risks. Vietnam ranked 119 out of 175 countries and territories in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index. China came in at 100th place. Meanwhile, other Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia are also competing to win manufacturing jobs.

“It’s not guaranteed that Vietnam will fulfil its potential,” said Hawksworth. “Part of it is that Vietnam is simply in a good geographic location and part of it is that it does have some catching up to do in terms of GDP per capita.”

Much of the work being transferred to Vietnam is in low-end manufacturing as China moves up the value chain: labor-intensive work in textiles, garments, furniture and electronics. Meanwhile, China is gradually improving value. “The productivity of Vietnam’s manufacturing sector is very low,” Karel Eloot, Shanghai-based director at McKinsey & Co.’s Asia Operations Practice, said in November. “That’s the biggest blowback for further expansion in Vietnam.”

However, the government is working on some of the economy’s biggest millstones. Vietnam will attempt to sell a record amount of shares in state-owned companies this year, a deputy general director of the finance ministry’s corporate finance department, said in an interview March 13. The plan to sell stakes in about 280 entities this year is “credit positive” for banks, Moody’s Investors Service said.

There are other positives. Vietnam is in talks on a free trade deal with the European Union and is part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Source: Dan Tri newspaper

1. When we last met in Hanoi, Vietnam, on May 21, 2017, the ministers of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam reaffirmed the balanced outcome and the strategic and economic significance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement signed in Auckland, New Zealand, on February 4, 2016, (hereinafter referred to as “the TPP”) highlighting its principles and high standards as a way to promote regional economic integration, contribute to the economic growth prospects of its member countries and create new opportunities for workers, families, farmers, businesses and consumers.

2. In May, ministers tasked officials with engaging in a process of assessing options to bring the comprehensive, high-quality agreement into force expeditiously. Over the past several months, officials have worked to reach a balanced outcome that maintains the significant benefits of the TPP.

3. Ministers are pleased to announce that they have agreed on the core elements of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Ministers agreed to Annex I and II, which incorporate provisions of the TPP, with the exception of a limited set of provisions, which will be suspended. The annexes also incorporate a list of four specific items on which substantial progress was made but consensus must be achieved prior to signing.

4. Ministers agree that the CPTPP maintains the high standards, overall balance and integrity of the TPP while ensuring the commercial and other interests of all participants and preserving our inherent right to regulate, including the flexibility of the parties to set legislative and regulatory priorities. Ministers also affirm the right of each party to preserve, develop and implement its cultural policies. Ministers consider that the CPTPP reflects the desire of the parties to implement the TPP outcomes among themselves.

5. Ministers confirm that the legal instrument proposed for the CPTPP allows the participants to act decisively in a timely manner to advance their shared objectives. Ministers reaffirm that the CPTPP demonstrates their firm commitment to open markets, to combatting protectionism and to advancing regional economic integration.

6. Noting Article 6 of the CPTPP, ministers share the view that the scope of a review may extend to proposals to amend the CPTPP to reflect the circumstances‎ concerning the status of the TPP.

7. Furthermore, ministers decided that all the TPP‎ side letters signed among the 11 countries will be maintained in principle, unless the relevant parties decide otherwise.

8. Ministers tasked officials with continuing their technical work, including continuing their efforts toward finalizing those items on which consensus has not yet been achieved, as well as legal verification of the English text and translation to prepare finalized text for signature.

9. Ministers recognize that each country will need to pursue its own domestic processes, including ‎public consultation, in advance of signing.

Source: international.gc.ca

On May 10, 2018, the Prime Minister issued Official Letter No.602/TTg-CN on a number of measures to strengthen the state management for activities of exploiting, trading and export of sand resources.The Official Letter took effect from the date of its promulgation.

Accordingly, the Prime Minister hereby guides the following specific contents:

1. Not exporting raw minerals (including sand); only export of deeply processed and valuable products. For silica white sand and yellow sand for casting, but have signed export contracts with foreign partners before September 15, 2017, in accordance with current export laws is permited to continue exporting.
2. The Ministry of Construction shall assume the prime responsibility, coordinate with concerned agencies in evaluating the overall supply and demand of silica sand in the world and in the domestic; to coordinate with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in proposing solutions to exploit, process and use effectively and sustainably for socio-economic development; to promptly adjust the planning on the exploration, exploitation and use of minerals for use as construction materials and submit them to the Prime Minister for consideration and decision.
3. The Ministry of Construction need agree with the Ministry of Justice on study and elaboration of legal documents on conditions for export of minerals to be used as construction materials in accordance with regulations; to assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the Ministry of Finance and concerned agencies in formulating mechanisms and policies on taxes, thus creating legal grounds for the management of sand resources.
4. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment shall coordinate with the Ministry of Construction and concerned ministries in studying the overall planning of minerals, including sand.

It can be seen that, through the issuance of Official Letter No.602/TTg-CN, the Prime Minister has specific and timely guidance, thereby contributing to improving management effectiveness of State agencies for the exploitation and use of sand resources is suitable with the social demands, at the same time ensuring the reduction of adverse impacts on the environment.