Vietnam records 45% jump |in YoY automobile sales
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Vietnamese bought over 26,000 cars in May, a 45-per-cent increase compared with the same period last year, a report from the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association noted.
Taking the lead in sales were passenger cars, with 14,039 units, and commercial cars, with 10,312 units, rising 2.2 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively. Nearly 1,680 special-purpose cars were sold, a drop of 27 per cent.
The report showed that 19,117 domestically assembled cars and 6,911 imported cars were sold.
Local car-maker Truong Hai Automobile JSC (Thaco) took the lead in the month after it sold 9,960 units, which was 44 per cent of the market.
Toyota Motor Vietnam ranked second, with 4,277 cars sold, or 19 per cent of the market. It was followed by Ford, Honda, GM Vietnam and Mercedes-Benz Vietnam. — VNS
Vietnam Airlines opens
Danang-Bangkok route
National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines will open a route from central Danang City to Bangkok on June 26.
The carrier will conduct four flights per week on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in Airbus A321 planes.
The flights will depart from Danang at 10.55pm and at 1.45am from Bangkok. The flight time is one hour and 35 minutes.
This is the fourth international flight departing from Danang, after flights to Siem Reap, Seoul and Tokyo. It is expected to boost trade, especially tourism between Southeast Asia and the country’s central region through Danang.
On this occasion, Vietnam Airlines launched a preferential ticket price programme for passengers on this route. The return ticket is priced at VND669,000 (Bt1,057) for economy class and VND4.6 million for business class.
The tickets will be sold from now until July 10 for flights departing from June 26 to December 31. The prices do not include other fees and taxes.
Passengers can visit the carrier’s website at www.vietnamairlines.com for further information. — VNS
JG Summit plans major
petrochemical expansion
MANILA – Gokongwei-led JG Summit Holdings Inc plans to invest US$500 million to $600 million (Bt17.6 billion to Bt21.1 billion) to expand its petrochemical business over the next three years, with the aim of serving domestic and overseas markets.
JG Summit president Lance Gokongwei told reporters after JG Summit’s stockholders meeting last Thursday that after investing around $1 billion to develop a petrochemical business in the country, the group was ready to expand capacity in its current site in Batangas.
From a current capacity of 320,000 tonnes of ethylene a year, JG Summit plans to expand capacity to about half a million tonnes by 2019. This will include the building of downstream capacity – the production of butadiene and aromatics.
Butadiene is an industrial chemical used in the production of synthetic rubber while aromatic compounds (including benzene, toluene and xylene isomers) are widely used by the chemical and energy industries.
Currently, the Philippines imports both of these products.
“So we’ll be able to reduce the import dependency of the Philippines,” Gokongwei said, adding this project could be completed by 2019.
