Viet Kieu begin to invest in VN property market

HA NOI — A large number of Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) have started to invest in the Vietnamese real estate market.

Investments had become more diversified and stronger than ever, said Megagroup's Director Nguyen Xuan Chau.

Chau added that the trend had started around 10 years ago and really picked up over the past two years.

In 2010, he said, a series of resorts and ecological tourism projects were announced with a growing number of North American management and consultancy firms co-ordinating the projects.

To capitalise on this, Minh Viet Investment Joint Stock Company recently bought into the franchise of a famous foreign company in order to use its trademark to invest in Viet Nam's real estate market.

According to the com-pany's director Chi Edward, his company will use the trademark to do business in training and brokerage as well as managing and developing the real estate market in Viet Nam.

The company had previously invested in projects in Ha Noi, HCM City and the northern province of Quang Ninh.

As further proof, at the end of 2009, the director of Binh Thien An Joint Stock Company, Viet kieu Trinh Thanh Huy, decided to return from Russia and announced that his company was looking to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the real estate market in HCM City.

Binh Thien An is currently involved with the Thao Dien Metropolice project in District 2 of HCM City.

In the second and third quarters of this year, many other tourism developments were announced by overseas Vietnamese investors from eastern Europe.

The Vietnamese real estate market was still young. It had a huge potential to attract investment from overseas Vietnamese, Chau said.

Referring to a recent survey, experts said the new trend would create competitiveness in the market which would help develop it further.

The survey was carried out at an international real estate exhibition with the participation of 46 countries.

The results showed that investment interest in the Vietnamese real estate market had grown by 20-30 per cent since 2008.

Another survey conducted by a British company also found that in the next two years, Viet Nam would become one of the top three markets of interest in the world. — VNS

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GE opens wind-turbine plant

Aerial view of GE manufacturing facility in Nomura Industrial Zone in Hai Phong. — VNS Photo

HAI PHONG — In response to growing global demand for clean energy, General Electric officially inaugurated its first manufacturing facility in the northern port city of Hai Phong yesterday.

The factory, which has a total investment of more than US$61 million, will manufacture wind turbine components. Parts will be shipped to GE wind turbine manufacturing factories worldwide.

The plant occupies a 8.4ha in Nomura-Hai Phong Industrial Zone and has a designed capacity of 1,500 products per year. It expected to generate 400 jobs.

Initially, the facility will produce generators for 1.5MW wind turbines.

John Krenicki, GE vice chairman and CEO of GE Energy, said: "Viet Nam is an ideal place for GE to invest and expand our manufacturing capability because it has a skilled work force and a bright future in its energy sector."

"With demand for electricity, fuel, and water continuing to rise around the world we believe that building in Viet Nam is a great investment," he added.

Over the past few years, GE has invested in a number of activities in Viet Nam, ranging from clean energy and health care to aviation.

Tran Tuan Anh, deputy minister of Industry and Trade, said he hoped GE would expand its production base in Hai Phong to include other wind turbine components.

"Wind power is a completely new sector in Viet Nam. Demand is increasing and fossil energy resources are exhausted. Thus, recycled energy development will play an important role in ensuring national energy security," he said.

GE and the Ministry of Industry and Trade signed a strategic partnership agreement on Thursday in Ha Noi.

GE will continue investing in the hi-tech clean energy sector in the country, focusing on the manufacture of gas turbines and development of support industries, the deputy minister said.

GE launched in Viet Nam in 1993, one of the very first American companies to do so after the US lifted its trade embargo.

The company later set up a representative office in HCM City in 2001. In 2003, GE established the 100 per cent foreign-invested GE Viet Nam Co Ltd in Viet Nam.

GE is a global infrastructure, finance and media company, operating in the energy, water, transportation, health, oil and gas, finance and information sectors. It reaped a revenue of $40 billion last year. — VNS

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Landlords fight for new tenants

HCM CITY — Landlords in HCM City will vie with each other during the third quarter in offering better leasing deals including rent and amenities, according to the latest market review published by real estate firm CBRE.

The firm received 28 per cent more enquiries in the third quarter than the second, but more than 43 per cent of these were for spaces 150 sq.m and smaller, the review says.

The company estimates that around 1.2 million square meters of office space will be put in use over the next three years in the city.

Project owners will face a challenge from long-term tenants of large areas who plan to re-rent a part of their space at prices between 15-35 per cent lower than the standard ones, CBRS associate director of research and consulting Rudolf Hever, said at a press conference on Monday.

He also said (2,000-5,000sq.m) grade C buildings in prime locations would continue to be popular because their value and long-term lease would help tenants have greater control over their investment.

There were no new grade A office buildings on offer during the third quarter, but rents for the segement reduced lightly to a monthly average of US$36.7 per sq.m, which Hever said was due to higher demand for grade B and C spaces.

One grade B building and eight new grade C buildings came on line in the third quarter, providing a total of 63,180sq.m. — VNS

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Sacomreal to list 100 million shares in Vietnam, chairman says

Saigon Thuong Tin Real Estate Joint- Stock Co., a unit of the fourth-biggest bank on Vietnam’s main stock market, plans to list 100 million shares on the Hanoi Stock Exchange next month, the unit’s chairman said.

The shares will start trading on Nov. 9, Dang Hong Anh said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Vietnam’s stock market debuts, 75 percent of which rose in the first eight months of the year, have all dropped bar one since September, amid concerns that high interest rates will crimp lending and the currency will fall further. The benchmark VN Index dropped 6.9 percent this year and closed at 458.66 today.

Sacomreal, as the Ho Chi Minh City-based property developer is known, plans to go ahead with the listing as “we still believe in our future because we target a 30 percent increase in profit a year from 2011 to 2015,” company General Manager Thai Van Chuyen said Thursday.

Sacomreal, whose businesses include real-estate, property consulting and office rental, has since 2008 started construction on projects including Sacomreal Hoa Binh Residential Building, Office Building General Limex and Tan Thanh Urban Area in Ho Chi Minh City, it said in a statement on its website.

The company had a pretax profit of VND668 billion ($33.4 million) in the first nine months of the year, exceeding the target of VND650 billion for the whole of 2010, Chuyen said.

Demand for office space in Ho Chi Minh City continues to grow, though rents are expected to come down, especially in buildings with lower occupancy, according to the third-quarter report from CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.

The unit of Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint-Stock Bank is trading from 30,000 dong to 40,000 dong per share in the so- called over-the-counter market, Chuyen said. Companies don’t have to set initial prices for the first trading day on the country’s second-biggest bourse.

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Vietnam to host international rice congress

History’s largest international gathering of rice experts will meet in Vietnam next month to explore strategies that will help farmers feed the world’s growing population.

The third International Rice Congress will bring together international leaders in rice science, rice policy makers, rice traders, and others across the industry’s private and public sectors.

The event is being jointly organized by Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the International Rice Research Institute and Bangkok-based Asia Congress Events Co.

Due to mounting pressure on global food production, exaggerated by poverty and climate change, the need to find ways to ensure an affordable and abundant rice population is becoming critical.

Delegates will discuss the latest rice research, future technologies, trade issues, and policies that will define the future role of rice in supporting poor rice-dependent communities.

More than half of the world’s population, or more than three billion people, depend on rice as their main food source, including around 640 million Asians living in extreme poverty.

“Rice producers will play a more and more crucial role in preventing future food shortages,” said Dr. To Phuc Tuong, chairman of the congress.

Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand and the fifth-largest producer of rice, exported 5.4 million tons of rice, worth US$2.3 billion, in the first seven months of 2010, up around 8.51 percent in quantity and 12.9 percent in terms of value.

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Vietnam to host international rice congress

History’s largest international gathering of rice experts will meet in Vietnam next month to explore strategies that will help farmers feed the world’s growing population.

The third International Rice Congress will bring together international leaders in rice science, rice policy makers, rice traders, and others across the industry’s private and public sectors.

The event is being jointly organized by Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the International Rice Research Institute and Bangkok-based Asia Congress Events Co.

Due to mounting pressure on global food production, exaggerated by poverty and climate change, the need to find ways to ensure an affordable and abundant rice population is becoming critical.

Delegates will discuss the latest rice research, future technologies, trade issues, and policies that will define the future role of rice in supporting poor rice-dependent communities.

More than half of the world’s population, or more than three billion people, depend on rice as their main food source, including around 640 million Asians living in extreme poverty.

“Rice producers will play a more and more crucial role in preventing future food shortages,” said Dr. To Phuc Tuong, chairman of the congress.

Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand and the fifth-largest producer of rice, exported 5.4 million tons of rice, worth US$2.3 billion, in the first seven months of 2010, up around 8.51 percent in quantity and 12.9 percent in terms of value.

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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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