Singapore-Vietnam JV opens liver treatment center

Guests view a machine at the newly-opened liver center - Photo: Quoc Hung

HCMC - The Asian Liver Center in Vietnam, a Singapore-Vietnam joint-venture offering specialist liver treatment, was opened late last week in HCMC, offering another quality choice for patients.

The center is a joint-venture between Singapore-based Asian Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation (ACLDT) and Vietnam’s Hoa Lam Investment Development Corporation (Hoa Lam).

The center will offer diagnostics, endoscopy and consultations to patients having Hepatitis B and C, fatty liver, liver cancer and alcoholic liver disease. Singapore-based specialists from ACLDT will travel regularly to Vietnam to provide liver care and advice, supported by a local ACLVN medical team, according to the venture.

Located at 201 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street in District 1, the decent facility has examination rooms, an endoscopy suite, ultrasound room and a pharmacy.

It is also connected by sophisticated tele-medical technology which allows doctors from Singapore to have face-to-face consultation with patients in Vietnam. Doctors can also remotely examine X-rays and follow up with advice for further treatment.

ALCVN is the first such joint-venture satellite clinic by ACLDT, whose lead surgeon Tan Kai Chah has carried out over 800 liver transplantations.

Apart from liver treatment, ALCVN will refer patients requiring surgery or transplantations to ACLDT which is based in Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore, said Tran Thi Lam, chairwoman of the local partner. She noted the new center was the initial human resource preparation to put the first general hospital in the Hi-Tech Healthcare Park in HCMC into operation.

“In the near future, I do believe that Doctor KC Tan will attract more professional doctors from other countries to come working at the Hi-Tech Healthcare Park,” she said.

The opening ceremony for ALCVN was witnessed by senior government and health officials, business leaders and VIPs including Vietnam’s former Prime Minister Phan Van Khai. It was followed by a seminar, attended by over 200 Vietnamese doctors and health officials, at which ACLDT surgeons presented papers on liver disease.

“We are excited by the opportunity of working with a highly regarded partner such as the Hoa Lam Corporation to bring advanced liver care and treatment to Vietnam. For ACLDT, this center is strategically important as it is our first satellite clinic. Its success will pave the way for more centers in Asia and possibly the Middle East,” said ACLDT’s Tan.

ACLDT currently treats about 270 Vietnamese patients a year and has conducted five liver transplantations for Vietnamese patients to date.

“It is our mission to help train the doctors and medical personnel in Vietnam so that in the years to come, Vietnamese patients can be treated here for a fraction of the costs compared to going abroad,” he said.

Tan added that “with this technology transfer, we hope that in two years time we will have the expertise to commence a full-fledged Liver Center in the new Medical Hi-Tech Park, itself a JV between a Singapore company and Hoa Lam Corporation.

The park project worth US$400 million and located at 532A Kinh Duong Vuong Street in Tan Binh District was owned by Singapore’s Hoa Lam-Shangri-La Healthcare Co., which organized a groundbreaking ceremony in 2008. Under the investor’s investment scheme, the park will cover more than 37.5 hectares in the district, about 10 kilometers from the city’s central business district.

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Experts call for new FDI strategy

Experts have called on authorities to provide strong, clear conditions,
not merely open offers for foreign investors, before granting FDI
licences.

The new concept in luring foreign direct investment (FDI) was prompted by
the fact that a number of major FDI projects have had their licences
revoked or have been liquidated and shifted to other investors due to
slow deployment or inefficient operations.

Prof. Dr.
Nguyen Mai, the country’s leading expert in FDI, said the FDI strategy
should focus on quality and efficiency, sustainable development, minimal
carbon emissions and commitments to transfer advanced technology and
skilled personnel.

He said that if advanced technology
was applied to steel production, the industry may save up to 40 percent
of energy and cut by half the emission of carbon to the environment.

These figures are very significant at a point when Vietnam is popular
with the major world producers in steel production, which is always a
leading energy guzzler, Mai pointed out.

Dr. Nguyen
Minh Phong from the Hanoi Institute of Social Economy warned of risks if
authorities care only about economic interests.

Management agencies and local administrations should take into account
national security during the FDI project licensing procedures,
especially in regard to those projects using vast areas of land,
afforestation and mining located in strategic positions, Phong said.

For all these reasons, experts called on responsible agencies to make
public both conditions and offers or take initiative in gaining
information about foreign investors before granting licences.

These steps are necessary to avoid “bad” or “virtual” projects, and
being able to apply incentives to those projects that are proven to be
positive and sustainable, they argued.

The Foreign
Investment Department estimated that Vietnam is expected to attract some
21 billion USD in FDI and disburse between 14 and 15 billion USD in
2010./.

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Industrial sector bigger but still uncompetitive

Vietnam has continuously enjoyed a growth in its industrial export
of between 15-20 percent over the past decade but its products accounted
for only 0.74 percent of the global market.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Vietnam ’s
turnover from industrial exports in the first eight months of this year
reached nearly 23 billion USD, an annual rise of 16 percent. However,
the increase is due to high prices rather than greater volume of exports
as several staples such as crude oil and coal have seen a drop in
exports.

In addition to the slow recovery of the
world market after the economic crisis, poor competitiveness from
out-dated production technologies is a major factor behind the poor sale
of Vietnam ’s industrial goods.

Out of the
country’s exports, industrial goods account for almost 60 percent,
mainly products from labour-intensive sectors that depend mostly on
imported materials. The export turnover of hi-tech products is estimated
to make up only 10 percent of the country’s total industrial export
turnover.

Former Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen
said Vietnam ’s industrial sector mainly depends on processing and
assembling while supporting industries are yet to develop.

He expressed concerns that foreign assembly plants may withdraw from
the Vietnamese market as they can’t find local suppliers of spare parts
and rising labour costs are putting them under pressure .

To increase the competitiveness of Vietnamese industrial goods’, the
Ministry of Industry and Trade has recently submitted a plan to the
Government to develop supporting industries.

Under
the plan, supporting industries for five key industries, including
garments, footwear, electronics, auto parts and mechanical engineering
will enjoy preferential policies in terms of investments, developing the
market as well as science and technology and infrastructures.

Projects in these fields will be exempt from corporate income tax for
four years since they have taxable incomes and enjoy a 50-percent tax
reduction in the following nine years./.

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Tra fish among US’s top ten popular seafood products

Tra fish has become one of the US’s top ten popular seafood products in
2009 for the first time, according to the Vietnamese Association of
Seafood Exporters and Processors (VASEP).

n its annual list of the 10 most popular seafood’s, released by the US’s
National Fisheries Institute on September 9, tra fish ranked 10 th .

Luong Le Phuong, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture
and Rural Development said that as tra fish is one of Vietnam’s major
exports, the ministry has introduced measures to strictly control its
quality throughout the stages from farming to processing and marketing.

According to VASEP, in the first seven months of
this year, Vietnamese seafood exports to the US reached 435 million USD,
of which tra fish accounted for 80.8 million USD, up 14 percent from
the same period last year, with the volume reaching over 26,000 tonnes.

However, the US’s Department of Commerce has made a
decision on anti-dumping tax based on the administrative review of tra
fish imports from Vietnam between August 2008 and July 2009, resulting
in Vietnamese seafood exporters facing higher tariffs.

Nguyen Huu Dung, the Deputy Chairman of VASEP said that the
unreasonable tariffs have made many Vietnamese businesses suffer heavy
losses and tra fish exports to the US will find it harder in the near
future./.

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Bad book-keeping cuts SME credit access

Most small and medium enterprises in Vietnam are unable to access bank loans because of their inability to present comprehensive financial documents, heard a report at a conference Thursday.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) estimated that less than 30 percent of Vietnamese SMEs are able to access bank loans. The banks themselves put the figure at around 20 percent.

Dang Van Thanh, chairman of Vietnam Association of Auditors and Accountants, said many enterprises do not maintain financial records with a compelete accounting system and accurate reports.

Nguyen Thi Huong Nga of ANZ said to get bank loans, enterprises have to pass “harsh credit barriers”.

Banks will “look through” several criteria such as the enterprises’ solvency and financial capacity, whether their business plans are doable, how their money rotates in the market, their profits and losses, Nga said.

SMEs account for 90 percent of enterprises in Vietnam and they should have been a fertile market for banks, she said.

Enterprises should improve their auditing and accounting systems, and think about inviting independent auditors to make reports.

An independent auditor is not mandatory for bank loans but it helps convince the lenders about the transparency of a firm's financial information, Nga said.

However, most SMEs cannot afford the services of an independent auditor, conference participants noted.

Le Thi Hong Len, representative of the UK-based Association of Chartered Certified Accountants in Vietnam, said shortcomings in Vietnam’s laws and policies are also reasons why SMEs cannot get bank loans.

But while waiting for changes in laws and policies, the enterprises should also change their management, trading and financial administration, she said.

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Credit sluggish as banks prefer bond purchases

Local commercial banks are more interested in bond purchases than providing loans, making the goal of lowering interest rates hard to reach, a senior government advisor said.

Interest rates have been high as capital flows do not move freely in the banking system in accordance with supply and demand, Le Duc Thuy, chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Commission, told Thanh Nien.

A tightened monetary policy has blocked money inflows, he said, noting that a restriction on interbank deposits prevents banks from lending their surplus cash to others.

The funds are flowing into government bonds instead, he said.

“At first look it seems like banks are losing money because they pay 11.2 percent on deposits and then invest in bonds with a yield of 10 percent,” Thuy said. “But in fact banks can use government bonds to get loans at the central bank’s refinancing rate of only 7 percent, hence (they make) a profit.”

“This is how banks have been doing their business, and it makes sense they are not interested in lending,” he said.

Thuy said the government should have sold its bonds to the central bank because right now it’s large commercial banks that benefit the most, leaving interest rates at high levels.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in May told the State Bank of Vietnam to order lenders to bring down borrowing costs to 12 percent and cut the deposit rate to 10 percent.

The central bank said Wednesday that deposit rates were between 10.6 percent and 11.2 percent while lending rates ranged from 12 percent to 15 percent.

Vietnam’s “repeated” calls for commercial banks to lower their lending rates after tightening policy may damage market confidence, the International Monetary Fund warned this week.

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Credit sluggish as banks prefer bond purchases

Local commercial banks are more interested in bond purchases than providing loans, making the goal of lowering interest rates hard to reach, a senior government advisor said.

Interest rates have been high as capital flows do not move freely in the banking system in accordance with supply and demand, Le Duc Thuy, chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Commission, told Thanh Nien.

A tightened monetary policy has blocked money inflows, he said, noting that a restriction on interbank deposits prevents banks from lending their surplus cash to others.

The funds are flowing into government bonds instead, he said.

“At first look it seems like banks are losing money because they pay 11.2 percent on deposits and then invest in bonds with a yield of 10 percent,” Thuy said. “But in fact banks can use government bonds to get loans at the central bank’s refinancing rate of only 7 percent, hence (they make) a profit.”

“This is how banks have been doing their business, and it makes sense they are not interested in lending,” he said.

Thuy said the government should have sold its bonds to the central bank because right now it’s large commercial banks that benefit the most, leaving interest rates at high levels.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in May told the State Bank of Vietnam to order lenders to bring down borrowing costs to 12 percent and cut the deposit rate to 10 percent.

The central bank said Wednesday that deposit rates were between 10.6 percent and 11.2 percent while lending rates ranged from 12 percent to 15 percent.

Vietnam’s “repeated” calls for commercial banks to lower their lending rates after tightening policy may damage market confidence, the International Monetary Fund warned this week.

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