Vietnam 'ready for Asean Economic Community'
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Vietnam is now ready for the Asean Economic Community (AEC), due to be formed at the end of 2015, experts said at a seminar held by the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM) late last week in Hanoi.
Nguyen Anh Duong, deputy head of the CIEM’s macro-economic section, said the country has made essential preparations in terms of governance and institutional and administrative procedure reforms.
Participants said the AEC will bring opportunities to Vietnam to expand markets and at the same time fiercer competition on its own turf, particularly in industrial and agricultural sectors.
CIEM deputy director Vo Tri Thanh however noted that Vietnam still faces problems in human resource quality and poor infrastructure. He suggested that the country develop effective macro-economic policies to boost the integration process through attracting investment while preventing negative impacts.
In particular, the government should continue improving its investment and business climate, completing legal framework and assisting enterprises in updating technologies and expanding markets.
The AEC aims to establish a single common market and production base for Asean member countries that enables the free movement of goods, services, capital and skilled labour within Asean.
HCM City programme separates organic waste
The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee of Vietnam has instructed authorities in six districts to separate solid waste at source into organic and inorganic for recycling.
Last year the programme was piloted in two residential areas in District 1’s Ben Nghe Ward. Nearly 90 households had been given two rubbish bins, one with a green bag to dump organic waste and the other with a grey one for inorganic stuff.
The waste was collected and transported to treatment plants in two different garbage trucks.
The programme is set to be taken to districts 3, 5, 6, and Binh Thanh this week, Nguyen Huu Tin, deputy chairman of the People’s Committee, said.
Households in these districts will be provided with dustbins and instructions on solid waste separation.
Tin instructed the people’s committees of the districts to allocate funds for providing the dustbins and equipping garbage trucks to collect the separated waste for treatment. – Viet Nam News
China’s 1,000-car-convoy request turned down
Hanoi rejected a request by a Chinese city to send people to a north Vietnam trade fair in a convoy of 1,000 cars, authorities said yesterday.
Requesting passage for so many vehicles to carry just 1,500 people was “weird”, a senior defence official said, requesting anonymity.
“It seems like they want to carry out a drill on our land. Why not bring them in 40 buses instead? We do not know the real purpose.”
The Vietnamese public might not react well to such a caravan, he added, as anti-China sentiment was still high following recent tensions over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Officials from Pingxiang City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China submitted the request to Vietnam’s Transport Ministry this month to bring “tourist cars” to the trade fair, Thanh Nien reported.
“We decided not to grant permission according to China’s request as we do not have enough conditions to ensure their safety,” Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Hong Truong said.
He said the request did not specify whether those taking part were delegates or tourists.
Officials said the request was filed on very short notice, leaving the Vietnamese side little time to prepare, according to the Thanh Nien report. – DPA
