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Torpedoes Don’t Kill People. Hanoi Kills People.
Why we shouldn’t be selling arms to Vietnam. BY JOHN SIFTON OCTOBER 3, 2014 The Obama administration announced on Oct. 2 that it was relaxing a decades-old ban on sales of lethal military equipment to Vietnam. The United States will now allow the Pentagon and U.S. companies to provide Vietnam with “maritime security-related defense articles.” The…
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Vietnam ranks 147 out of 165 countries in economic freedom
Vietnam’s economic freedom score is 50.8, making its economy the 147th freest in the 2014 Index. Its score is 0.2 point worse than last year, reflecting declines in freedom from corruption, monetary freedom, and business freedom that outweigh improvements in labor freedom and fiscal freedom. Vietnam is ranked 33rd out of 42 countries in the…
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China Aggression Sounds Wake-Up Call for Vietnam Makers
By Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen June 17, 2014 For more than eight years, Luong Thi Kim Oanh bought cases of thread from China for her garment factory in Hanoi. Last month, rattled by an anti-China riot in her country, she placed her first order from South Korea. “I used to buy 90 percent of my thread…
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Convicted Ex-Vietnamese Shipping Firm Boss Drops Bombshell in Court
RFA, Jan 08, 2014 The former head of a beleaguered Vietnamese state shipping company sentenced to death for corruption has dropped a bombshell at a court hearing, saying he paid bribes to top officials of the ruling Communist Party in a futile bid to avoid arrest and prosecution, according to state media Wednesday. Duong Tri…
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Pacific Trade Pact Hits Snags
Lawmakers Push for Penalties Over Currency Policy Ian Talley in Beijing and William Mauldin in Washington Nov. 17, 2013 7:55 p.m. ET Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew just completed a grueling 23,000-mile, five-country tour to rally support for a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. But it looks like his toughest sell might be back home in Washington.…
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Vietnam must ditch state-sponsored crony capitalism
May 15, 2013 8:03 pm By David Pilling For a country in its demographic sweetspot, the economy is not growing fast enough The country has just emerged from a scandal that exposed virulent corruption at the heart of the Communist party. There is a pressing need to reform state-owned enterprises – behemoths of inefficiency, patronage…
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Vietnam’s Star Is Dimming
By William Pesek May 9, 2013 6:00 PM ET Like other would-be tiger economies, Vietnam faces a trifecta of new threats: a crisis-paralyzed Europe, a faltering America, and a newly spendthrift Japan. Yet the biggest risk to the nation’s future may be old-fashioned nostalgia. It has been 27 years since Hanoi launched the “Doi Moi”…
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In Hard Times, Open Dissent and Repression Rise in Vietnam
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — His bookshelves are filled with the collected works of Marx, Engels and Ho Chi Minh, the hallmarks of a loyal career in the Communist Party, but Nguyen Phuoc Tuong, 77, says he is no longer a believer. A former adviser to two prime ministers, Mr. Tuong, like so many…
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Why Vietnam needs more banking reform
April 15th, 2013 Author: Vu Quang Viet, UN Vietnam’s economic growth in the last decade has been driven by a tremendous expansion of bank credit. Domestic credit was 35 per cent of GDP in 2001; this figure had surged to 120 per cent by 2010. As a consequence, the ratio of average debt to owners’…
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Vietnam’s lost charm
Business Standard Barun Roy April 3, 2013 Last Updated at 21:50 IST Foreign investors are losing faith in their sought-after destination on the back of slow reforms and rising corruption Something has gone wrong for Vietnam. It finds it’s no longer the same darling of foreign investors it used to be. For three years in…
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