Obama to meet young entrepreneurs in VN

 

It is included in his three-day official visit to Vietnam that began yesterday. 

He will meet young entrepreneurs and members of the business community at Dreamplex, which is inspired by WeWork, a model of a common workspace popular in the United States.

Vo Minh Toan, head of customer care at Dreamplex, said the co-working space had been checked thoroughly in the past three months by the US side ahead of Obama’s visit. 

Last month, Dreamplex, with three floors of 500 square metres each on 21 Nguyen Trung Ngan Street, District 1, hosted a US Consulate dinner, the “American Innovation Roadshow 2016” and a Google meeting with local start-ups. – Viet Nam News 

 

IMF upbeat on fast 

growth of Laos’ economy 

The International Monetary Fund believes the Laotian economy will continue to grow at a strong pace by implementing policies that will ensure its growth is sustainable. 

However, the IMF warns that Laos will require a gradual fiscal consolidation, with a focus on better revenue collection and improvements in the composition of spending, to make sure that the public debt burden can be gradually reduced, making public finances more sustainable. 

A senior economist from the National Economic Research Institute, Dr Leeber Leebouapao, told Vientiane Times on Friday that he agreed with the IMF's recommendations. He said it was vital to pursue financial principles and ensure that revenue collection achieves targets while ensuring that the state budget is spent in effective ways. 

“The new minister of finance is working on this issue,” Leeber said, adding that stronger measures are required to address financial leaks. 

“In the short term, we need to ensure that our currency does not appreciate, because if that happens it will directly impact our export sector.” 

Leeber said that in the long term, Laos would have to push for productivity and work harder to bolster the export sector, which is considered one of the main drivers of economic growth. 

Over the past five years, despite the global economic downturn, Laos’ gross domestic product grew by 7.9 per cent and the number of poor families declined significantly. “I think the Laotian economy will continue to grow at the [annual] rate of 7.5 per cent given that many mega-projects have begun and are progressing as anticipated,” Leeber said. – Vientiane Times

 

Vietnamese food 

industry ‘has potential’

The food-production industry in Vietnam has great potential for development but local companies need to revamp production and study consumer trends to compete with foreign rivals, experts say.

At a forum on the food-production industry in Ho Chi Minh City last week, Chau Thinh Lan, director of Viet An Food Processing, said that in the domestic food-production industry, the value of spices, sauces and seasoning production had reached 4.5 trillion dong (Bt7.2 billion) and was expected to reach 19 trillion dong by 2020.

He said food-consumption trends in Vietnam showed that future use would move towards processed foods and away from more traditional food-production methods.

Candy will be developed in the future, Lan said, adding that the local dairy industry would have many chances of development, especially in health-related products.–Viet Nam News