AEC Feed

Vietnam’s property market will see more sale launches and transactions in the second quarter of this year, the Vietnam Real Estate Association forecasts. 
At a conference, Nguyen Manh Ha, the association’s deputy president, said the realty market would be bolstered by the stable macro-economic situation, and a rising number of tourist arrivals to Vietnam and flows of foreign direct investment into the property sector.
He cited statistics showing that Vietnam had received more than 3.2 million foreign tourists in the first quarter of this year, up by 29 per cent over the same period last year. FDI inflows jumped by more than 91 per cent to US$334 million in the January-March period. 
Ha said the slowdown in transactions in the first quarter was because of the nation’s biggest holiday, which fell in late January. 
However, the market started to get busier from March with more transactions and property developers gearing up for sale launches in the coming quarters. 
He said projects which benefited from infrastructure development, such as those along rapid bus and metro routes, had good liquidity.
Several developers were expected to develop and release a huge supply of affordable homes, which would contribute to improving transactions and market liquidity, according to the Vietnam Association of Property Brokers. – Viet Nam News

Mobile operator Green Packet back on track
Malaysian mobile broadband and networking solutions provider Green Packet’s back-to-the-basics strategy appears to be paying off.
The company, which returned to the black in the third quarter of the financial year ended December 31, 2016 after years of bleeding red ink, had two years ago refocused its efforts on beefing up its original operations - the solutions and communications segments.
At about the same time, it sold off to Telekom Malaysia its controlling stake in Packet One Networks (M) (now rebranded as webe) where its broadband business was parked. Now the firm, which had been punished by investors for its decision to go into the heavy-capital expenditure broadband business service in 2008, appears to have finally regained some favour. It has also gained traction among institutional investors.
Last month, Green Packet managed to place out 10 per cent of its issued and paid-up capital to institutional investors, something that it had not done in at least the past five years. “We want to change our investor profile to majority institutional now that we’re back to profitability,“ chief executive officer Kay Tan told StarBiz.
Green Packet’s stock, in the meantime, is up more than 28 per cent since the beginning of the year. The company has a market capitalisation of 280 million ringgit (Bt2.1 billion). — The Star

Indonesia textiles see solid export growth
Indonesia's January and February exports of textiles and textile products grew by 3 per cent year on year to US$2 billion, said Industry Minister Airlangga Hartanto.
“This industry could function as a social security net because it employs a large number of people; some 3 million [Indonesians] make a living from this industry,” Airlangga said at a press conference in Jakarta on Monday.
The statement was originally delivered during the recent launch of the renovated textile company PT Sri Rejeki Textile’s (PT Sritex) factories in Surakarta, central Jakarta.
Total investment in the textile industry reached 7.54 trillion rupiah (Bt19.5 billion) in 2016, with total exports worth $11.87 billion. The industry employed 17.03 percent of all workers in the manufacturing industry. 
“I appreciate PT Sritex for investing 2.6 trillion rupiah to expand the capacity of its spinning and finishing factories, which are expected to employee 3,500 people,” Airlangga added. —The Jakarta Post