☕ Afternoon briefing on May 30

30/05/2023 16:32

The following is a brief review of the day’s events as reported by the Vietnam News Agency.

Hanoi (VNA) - The following is a brief review of the day’s events as reported by the Vietnam News Agency.

- The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has requested banks, branches of foreign banks, and providers of intermediary payment services to take steps to continue promoting cashless payment and the implementation of the national digital transformation programme.

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)

The move is also set to help with the plan on developing the application of resident data and electronic identification and authentication to serve national digital transformation for the 2022 - 2025 period, with a vision to 2030. Read full story

- Total revenue from retail sales of consumer goods and services in May was estimated at 519 trillion VND (22.09 billion USD), an increase of 1.5% over the previous month and 11.5% year on year thanks to the long holidays in the beginning of the month, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).

The results pushed the total retail sales of consumer goods and services in the first five months of this year to 2.52 quadrillion VND (107.2 billion USD), a year-on-year rise of 12.6%, excluding the 8.3% rise in price, the GSO reported. Read full story

- The southern largest economic hub of Ho Chi Minh City is striving to achieve an annual growth rate of at least 10% in the inflow of remittances during the 2023-2025 period and maintains this rate in 2025-2030.

HCM City seeks ways to attract more remittances. (Photo: VNA)

The information was heard at a seminar held in the city on May 29 by the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs of HCM City, in coordination with the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Branch in HCM City to seek comments and solutions of overseas Vietnamese intellectuals to effectively attract and optimise remittance resources in the city. Read full story

- Consumers and businesses are called on to join authorities to curb counterfeit, fake, and smuggled goods on online shopping platforms, particularly as e-commerce has been thriving strongly in Vietnam.

Statistics from the Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM) show that in 2021, Vietnam’s retail e-commerce market size reached 13.5-13.7 billion USD. In 2022, the figure increased to 16.4 billion USD and is forecasted to reach about 38 - 39 billion USD by 2025. Read full story

- Amid the slowing down of the global investment flows, experts held that improving both quality and number of foreign investment projects is a heavy task for Vietnam, requiring great efforts from the Vietnamese Government to fulfil the “dual targets”.

According to the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), as of May 20, Vietnam had drawn 10.86 billion USD of foreign direct investment (FDI), down 7.3% year on year, including 5.26 billion USD of newly-registered capital, up 27.8%. Read full story

- Sixty of the Vietnamese citizens recently rescued from a gambling establishment in Pampanga province, near Manila capital of the Philippines, arrived in the homeland on early May 30.

The 60 Vietnamese citizens arrive at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM City on May 30 morning. (Photo: VNA)

According to the Vietnamese Embassy in the Philippines, local authorities on May 4 rescued more than 1,000 people, including 437 Vietnamese nationals, who were forced to work at a gambling establishment in Pampanga province. Read full story

- Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan has said that Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh would chair a meeting of the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control this weekend to deliberate the downgrading of COVID-19 from its current placement in Class A infectious diseases down to Class B.

Lan told the National Assembly that on May 29 that the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that COVID-19 no longer constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the designation that was attached to the viral disease more than three years ago, but the pandemic is not over yet. Read full story

- Vietnam is among the top three most favourite tourist destinations for Korean visitors in Asia, according to statistics from KB Kookmin Card of the Republic of Korea (RoK).