Portal expected to reach large lychee consumers An online portal has been launched to help farmers in pandemic-hit Bac Giang province sell their lychees. “Thank God, it’s so effective,” vice director of Bac Giang Enterprise Consulting and Assistance Centre (BECA) Duong Thanh Son said about the portal launched by the centre. Bac Giang has been hit hardest by COVID-19 during its fourth wave in Vietnam, causing difficulties for local farmers. The portal www.hotrotieuthuvaithieubacgiang.com was launched about three weeks ago and a Facebook page hotrotieuthuvaithieubacgiang was created just a few days later when Bac Giang started entering the lychee harvest season. Consumers can register to buy a large volume of lychees – a minimum of a tonne – after inputting basic information like name, e-mail, phone number, address and amount of lychee. Son, who specialises in information technology and communication, said that the portal looked simple but behind it were automatic customer management and customer care programmes that help with online sales. The portal and the Facebook page have reached hundreds of thousands of users, Son said, adding that he has received positive feedback on social media. “We connect Bac Giang lychee farmers and co-operatives with buyers. We pledge that our consumers can buy high-quality lychee at very good prices,” Son said. “If we had thought of the portal earlier and prepared for it about three months ago when lychee was still green, we could have reached more consumers,” Son said. He said the idea for the portal came up when Bac Giang farmers entered lychee harvest time but the province was struggling to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the province has about 28,100 ha of lychee with an estimated production of 180,000 tonnes. The COVID-19 outbreaks caused difficulties for harvesting, transporting, selling and exporting the fruit. Together with the Government, provincial authorities, organisations and …
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VIETNAM BUSINESS NEWS JUNE 12
Economic growth to slow down in Q2, but production keeps rising The country’s economic growth in the second quarter of the year is expected to be lower than expected. However, the economy will also continue recovering strongly, with processing and manufacturing, and the service sector serving as key drivers of growth. At a recent government cabinet meeting, the Ministry of Planning and Investment said that based on positive performance of the economy in the first five months of 2021, it is projected the nation's economic growth rate will be about 5.8%. This will be lower than the target of 7.11% set in Government Resolution No.01/NQ-CP, released on January 1, on the key tasks for the implementation of the socioeconomic development plan and state budget estimates for 2021 (see box). The driving force of Vietnam's economic growth this year will be the industrial-construction sector and the service sector, especially processing and manufacturing, the MPI said. According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), in May, the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions in supply chains and trade, as well as transport activities in a number of localities who are home to big industrial production like Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, and Ho Chi Minh City. However, in the first five months, trade and transport activities still increased as compared to the same period last year. Specifically, the total retail and service consumption revenue of the entire economy expanded 7.6% to more than VND2 quadrillion US$86.96 billion, and total import turnover of goods went up by 33.5%, while passenger transportation rose 4.2%, and goods transportation climbed 10.5%. Global analysts FocusEconomics (based in Spain) said that Vietnam's economy recorded solid growth in the first quarter of 2021. GDP growth clocked in at 4.5% year-on-year in the first three months of this year, matching the growth rate from the last quarter of 2020. As such, while the first …
VIETNAM NEWS HEADLINES JUNE 14
5,000 residents in Vinh City put under lockdown due to suspected coronavirus case The anti-Covid-19 steering committee of Nghe An Province decided to lock down part of Ha Huy Tap Ward in Vinh City starting this morning, June 14, after the province's capital city reported its first suspected Covid-19 case by community transmission, affecting 5,000 local residents. Duong Dinh Chinh, director of the provincial Department of Health, said that the suspected case is a hairdresser living in the ward, who tested positive for the coronavirus yesterday, VnExpress reported. The hairdresser could have caught the disease from another coronavirus patient in her hometown in Ha Tinh. She had a complicated travel history, but did not declare it honestly and was also in close contact with many people. Therefore, the health department and the provincial government had to request the local competent forces specialized in information and technology to find the locations she had been to, according to VietnamPlus. Earlier, on May 6, the north-central province of Nghe An reported one locally-infected case who was a local man in Hoang Mai Town. He was found to have caught the disease from the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi. Two more employees of frontline hospital in HCMC infected with Covid-19 The HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases tested 924 employees from June 11 to 13 and detected 55 Covid-19 infections, up two over the figure reported yesterday, June 13, said director of the HCMC Department of Health Nguyen Tan Binh. At a meeting of the municipal steering committee for Covid-19 infection prevention and control held today, June 14, Binh said the 55 cases were employees of 13 units of the hospital, such as IT, administrative, general planning, personnel organization and pharmacy, the local media reported. Especially, all of them have got two shots of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. Worryingly, almost all of them are asymptomatic carriers of the …