☕ Afternoon briefing on September 22

Hanoi (VNA) - The following is a brief review of the day’s events as reported by the Vietnam News Agency on September 22.

- Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has assigned urgent tasks to particular ministries and agencies to deal with current economic difficulties in the new situation during a Government law-building session on September 22.

The PM noted that the world economy is facing numerous difficulties due to a growth slowdown and soaring inflation. The central banks of the US, the EU, the UK, and Japan have also moved to hike interest rates and appreciate their currencies, which has substantially affected other countries, including Vietnam. Read full story

- Vietnam values cooperation with Argentina’s Buenos Aires and wishes to diversify goods traded with the province, Ambassador Duong Quoc Thanh has said.

At his September 21 meeting with Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof, Thanh recommended the sides further beef up collaboration between localities in various sectors of Buenos Aires’s strength such as agriculture and energy. Read full story

 

-  Various Japanese enterprises are planning to expand their investment in Vietnam, where business insiders of Japan assess as the second most attractive investment destination after the US, according to Chief Representative of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) Najakima Takeo in Hanoi.

Addressing a recent conference, Takeo said although Japan’s direct investment into Vietnam declined in the first half of 2022, it still posted impressive growth of over 59% in 2021 and over 45% this year, the highest rate among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Read full story

- Global investors are planning to restructure their investment flows, a move predicted to take place strongly from now to 2023 and create opportunities for Vietnam, heard a conference on September 21.

Registered foreign investment totaled 16.7 billion USD as of the end of August, down 12.3% from a year earlier. However, the investment disbursement rose 10.5% to 12.8 billion USD and capital addition to existing projects up 50.7% to 7.5 billion USD. Read full story

- Universities nationwide are implementing more than 400 joint training programmes with foreign countries for the undergraduate level, as per statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training’s Department of International Cooperation.

Of the programmes, 186 were licensed by autonomous higher education institutions and 222 by the ministry. Read full story

 

- Around 10,000 households in the Mekong Delta provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap and Bac Lieu and Can Tho city have received training on the adoption of sustainable rice-farming practices and rice quality improvement, as part of a project underway since 2018, heard a conference on September 21.

The conference took place in Can Tho to review the results of the project Better Rice Initiative Asia phase II (BRIA 2) – Market-oriented Smallholder Value Chains Project (MSVC), or MSVC-BRIA 2, aiming to promote SRP standards for sustainable rice cultivation in the four localities. Read full story

- AMG C43, a famous sport sedan model of Mercedes-Benz, will be assembled in Vietnam in the time ahead, according to Mercedes-Benz Vietnam Director-General Bradley Kelly.

Mercedes-Benz Vietnam has seen an acceleration in the upgrade and development of domestic car production and assembly lines in recent years. That’s why in 2021 and 2022, it has invested 33 million USD in developing six state-of-the-art technologies, some of which have made debut in the Vietnamese market, Kelly told the Mercedes-Benz Driving Festival 2022 that kicked off at the F1 circuit in Hanoi on September 21. Read full story

- The northwestern border province of Dien Bien will host the 3rd Vietnam-Laos culture-sport-tourism border exchange festival on October 1 – 3, as heard at a press conference in Hanoi on September 22.

According to the organiser, the event will see the participation of artists, actors, ethnic people from 10 Vietnamese provinces and troupes from 10 Lao provinces./. Read full story