Foreign ship arrivals down 6 percent in first two months Vietnam’s sea ports have berthed some 4,900 foreign vessels over the last two months, a decline of 6 percent year-on-year, according to the Vietnam Marine Administration. The fall was due largely to the impact of COVID-19, which is resulting in major fluctuations in the transport sector, a representative of the administration said. Despite the lower number of foreign ships, the volume of import and export goods through ports grew. In January and February, 35.3 million tonnes of imports and 26 million tonnes of exports were handled at ports nationwide. The former represented an annual increase of 14 percent while the latter was as same as that last year. In particular, nearly 1.3 million TEUs for exports and 1.2 million for imports were handled during the period, up 32 and 16 percent, respectively, year-on-year; the highest growth since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, the arrival of domestic vessels totalled 5,300, up 11 percent year-on-year./. Quang Ninh’s Van Don airport reopens on March 3 The Ministry of Transport has decided to allow Van Don International Airport in the northern province of Quang Ninh reopen from 6:01am on March 3 after the COVID-19 pandemic has been put under control in the locality and the airport is safe to transport passengers. The airport was temporarily shut down from January 29 after an airport security staff was confirmed positive for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes the COVID-19 pandemic. The national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines announced earlier that it will resume flights between Ho Chi Minh City and Quang Ninh on March 3, thus becoming the first to restart flights to the Van Don airport since the local COVID-19 outbreak began. From March 3 to 17, one weekly flight will ply the route between the two destinations, on Wednesdays. Flight numbers will be increased to three a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, from March 18 until the …
Agent orange this is the voice
HCMC stock exchange wants to raise minimum trading lot
Le Hai Tra, CEO of the exchange, said: "This is the path that developed markets such as Japan, Taiwan and Singapore have all been through." The move could reduce the number of transactions by 40-50 percent, he said. Just this year the exchange increased the minimum lot from 10 to 100 to cope with the surge in the number of new investors in recent months. Trading averaged VND14.3 trillion ($620 million) a day last month, nearly four times the value a year earlier. But despite the change investors continued to report delays, especially in the afternoon when trading value rises to around VND15 trillion. The Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) recently offered to take over some stocks from the HoSE to ease the pressure. HoSE’s system has mostly remained unchanged over the last 20 years. It can handle a maximum of 900,000 transactions a day. The bourse is upgrading at a cost of $30 million, but the Covid-19 pandemic is delaying the work, which will not be completed at least until year end. When it sought to increase the trading lot to 100, the Vietnam Association of Financial Investors had voiced concern, saying it would deny new investors the opportunity to practice trading with small volumes. A minimum trading volume of 1,000 means small investors would not be able to afford shares trading at high prices like budget airline Vietjet, electronics retail chain Mobile World and conglomerate Vingroup. There are 12 shares currently trading at over VND100,000. Thus, an investor would have to put up VND100.5-230.5 million to buy 1,000 of these. Vietnam had 2.86 million stock trading accounts at the end of January, 20 percent up from a year earlier and equivalent to 2.94 percent of its population. Last year the ratio of HoSE’s total market cap to GDP was 67.59 percent. …
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