Business briefs

* Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Group, known as Vinacomin, hired Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Credit Agricole CIB and Citigroup Inc. to help advise it on a possible dollar bond sale, according to two people familiar with the matter. Vinacomin has been seeking approval from the government to sell US$500 million of bonds overseas this year.

* Overseas remittances to Ho Chi Minh City from January to September reached $3.04 billion, up 17.94 percent from the same period last year and nearing $3.15 billion for the whole of 2009, Nguyen Hoang Minh, deputy director of the central bank branch in the city, was quoted by Dau Tu (Investment) newspaper as saying. The value for the whole of 2010 is forecast to rise 20 percent, he said.

* Power prices in Vietnam will be adjusted four times a year in accordance with changes in input prices and the exchange rate starting from March 1 next year, the Vietnam Economic Times reported, citing an Industry and Trade Ministry document on implementing a market-oriented mechanism for power prices.

* Vietnam increased its rice export forecast for this year to 6.1 million tons, higher than a previous estimate of 5.9 million tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Shipments from the world’s second-biggest producer may be more than 1 million tons in the fourth quarter, according to the document, which was posted on the ministry’s website.

* Vietnam National Petroleum Corp., known as Petrolimex, will buy 140,000 cubic meters of gasoline and diesel from Dung Quat Oil Refinery this month, said Nguyen Hoai Giang, general director of Binh Son Refinery & PetroChemical Co., which runs the refinery. Previously a Dung Quat official said domestic petrol distributors may not be able to use up the refinery’s inventory by the end of this year and it may face an inventory of more than 720,000 tons of products.

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Coffee prices should stay stable

HCMC – Local experts predict that coffee prices in Vietnam would be stable during the 2010-2011 crop, ranging from VND24,000 to VND29,000 per kilo.

Vietnam is the second largest coffee exporter in the world, so foreign coffee traders and enterprises here will try to keep the prices low to below VND29,000 per kilo to improve their profit margins, coffee expert Doan Thien Nhan said.

Recently robusta coffee bean prices in the Central Highlands hit a two-year high of nearly VND31,000 a kilo.

Luong Van Tu, chairman of the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa), said coffee prices have risen on the global market due to low coffee stock. The world prices may move between US$1,700-1,800 per ton within the next month, keeping coffee prices in Vietnam high as well, he said.

According to Vicofa, both Vietnam and Brazil are drought affected. If there is not enough rainfall in October, the coffee crops from both nations would be impacted.

In addition about a third of the coffee trees in Daklak, Gia Lai, Dak Nong and Lam Dong provinces produce low quality beans because they are too old, contributing to a predicted 10-20% drop in output.

The International Coffee Organization estimates the world crop would increase by 7 million 60-kilo bags against last year to 133 million bags.

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New rule requires prior registration of milk prices

Vietnam's Finance Ministry has issued a new regulation that, for the first time, requires all imported milk powder products for children under six to have their prices registered with the authorities.

The move aims to exert some control over milk prices in Vietnam, which have increased steadily in recent years to an unreasonable level, news website VnExpress reported Sunday.

Under the new regulation, which takes effect on October 1, dairy firms have to register their prices before launching new products or adjusting prices.

Current regulations require only companies with 50 percent state capital to register their prices with the authorities.

As most of the dairy firms in Vietnam are private and foreign-invested companies, they could not be forced to list their prices until now.

Experts and consumers alike have complained that milk prices in Vietnam are too high despite low tax rates.

They said dairy firms spent too much on advertising and sales commissions to compete with each other, and then passed on the burden to end users.

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