Vietnam dreams of becoming worlds next factory but at what cost

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, right, and his then-Lao counterpart Phankham Viphavanh preside over a groundbreaking ceremony for the fifth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge in Bung Kan province in October, 2022 (Photo: bangkokpost) Bangkok (VNA) – The Thai government on January 28 announced that the fifth Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge is set to open early next year which should help boost border exchanges not only between localities between Thailand and Laos but also trade in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), as it will speed up imports between Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam , and China (Yunnan). The bridge, which connects the Thai northeast province of Bueng Kan and Laos' Bolikhamsay province, costs 3.6 billion THB (nearly 110 million USD), of which 2.5 billion THB comes from Thailand and the rest from Laos. According to deputy government spokeswoman Tipanan Sirichana, the construction is 60% complete and proceeding faster than planned. The project is … [Read more...] about Fifth Thai-Lao bridge to open next year

Pham Tuan Huy has become the second Vietnamese mathematician after famed Professor Ngo Bao Chau to receive a research fellowship from the Clay Mathematics Institute. The Clay Mathematics Institute officially announced two mathematicians who will be awarded research fellowships in 2023, including Paul Minter, who obtained his PhD in 2022 at the University of Cambridge, and Pham Tuan Huy, who is about to receive his PhD from Stanford University. Both Minter and Huy will be Clay Research Fellows starting July 1. The appointment term of Minter is four years while Huy's is five years. On the website of the Clay Mathematics Institute, Huy is introduced as a highly inventive and prolific researcher who has already made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, probability, number theory, and theoretical computer science. The 27-year-old is the second Vietnamese mathematician to receive a research fellowship from the Clay Mathematics Institute after famed Professor Ngo Bao Chau in … [Read more...] about Vietnamese mathematician granted Clay Research Fellowship

Many Vietnamese enterprises achieved success in 2022 after shifting to exports through e-commerce platforms, especially Amazon. The trend is expected to continue this year. Vietnam was among the top five countries with the highest e-commerce retail sale growth rates in 2022, according to a report by the U.S.’s market research company eMarketer. Impressive growth A year after beginning to sell goods on Amazon to European and American markets, ChicnChill, a Vietnamese handicraft brand, reported a growth rate of up to 700 percent. Tran Tuan Dung, CEO of ChicnChill, said he saw the start-up thrive when a majority of Vietnamese enterprises have scaled down their operations due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. He and his team spent months studying the lifestyle in European and American markets and home decoration trends there, thereby determining the company’s key products and penetrating into these markets. After a year, ChicnChill’s home decoration products are … [Read more...] about Vietnamese firms earn big from Amazon