The catfish wars: Vietnamese exporters refute US charges

September 27, 2010 9:51 am by Matt Steinglass

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The catfish wars between the US and Vietnam have now lasted seven years, and the latest chapter is suitably strange.

Vietnamese exporters of catfish are protesting against a recent US International Trade Agency move that could force them to pay retroactive anti-dumping tariffs on fish they exported to the US in 2008-9. For some seafood companies, the new tariffs would be up to 130 per cent of the price at which they sold the fish. That means they would have been far better off burying them in a hole than selling them to American customers. Continue reading »

Arrests at Vietnam’s state shipbuilder worry its foreign investors

September 20, 2010 1:50 pm by Matt Steinglass

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Vietnam’s prime minster Nguyen Tan Dung’s pet project to turn state run companies into chaebol-esque conglomerates seems to have been foiled yet again. Vietnamese police arrested another senior executive at the troubled state-owned shipbuilding conglomerate Vinashin over the weekend, the sixth in the last two months.

The saga comes as Vinashin is grappling to manage its heavy debt burden and it is a source of worry for foreign investors who hold hundreds of millions of dollars of that debt. Continue reading »

Nuclear power in Vietnam: the US and Russia compete

September 6, 2010 6:00 pm by Matt Steinglass

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Back when the northern half of Vietnam was a Soviet client state, and the southern half an American one, neither superpower would have contemplated building a nuclear power plant here.

But today Russia and America are again jockeying for influence in Vietnam, and this time they’re offering reactors. Continue reading »

Tags: nuclear power Posted in Vietnam | Permalink

Feng shui and cynicism in the Hanoi real-estate game

September 2, 2010 12:10 pm by Matt Steinglass

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Real-estate trader Nguyen Xuan Bien is either a very smart guy, or a guy with very well-placed friends, though in Vietnam these days it usually amounts to the same thing.

In July 2009, Bien heard from friends at government agencies that plans were afoot to move the national government’s administrative centre from Hanoi to the neighbouring precinct of Ba Vi. Bien quickly bought 18,000 square metres of land in Ba Vi, at a price of 200,000 dong per square metre, or a total just over $150,000. Continue reading »

Tags: property Posted in Vietnam | Permalink

[Hey Bric Spender] Gadget-loving Vietnam goes shopping

August 18, 2010 10:18 am by Matt Steinglass

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Who would have thought hi-tech gadgets would take off so fast in a country where the per capita GDP, at $1,050, is lower than the cost of a new iPhone 4 ($1,100)?

But the unlocked phones are selling fast – four a day at Hoang Mobile in downtown Hanoi, according to enthusiastic sales staff in the cramped store just a few blocks from the equally tiny Digiworld, a licensed Apple vendor. It, too, is jammed most days, with customers asking for advice on how to work the 3G connection on their iPads. Continue reading »

Posted in Vietnam | Permalink

First blood to Russia in the race to bring nuclear power to Vietnam

June 18, 2010 8:45 am by Matt Steinglass

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The US’s Westinghouse Electric and Japan’s Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy lost the race to build Vietnam’s first nuclear power plant this spring, when Hanoi picked Russia’s Atomstroyexport instead. Now the firms are competing for the country’s second plant, along with French, Russian, and South Korean companies.

But under the US’s Atomic Energy Act, before either Westinghouse or Hitachi can export their American-developed nuclear technology, the US and Vietnam must sign a nuclear cooperation pact, known as a Section 123 Agreement. And the Vietnamese say that’s slowing things down. Continue reading »

Tags: energy, nuclear power Posted in Russia, Vietnam | Permalink

Vietnam blackouts have the temperature rising

June 16, 2010 12:34 pm by Matt Steinglass

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In Vietnamese, one way of signaling you don’t like someone is to refer to them as “Ong”, or Mister.

So it’s not a good sign for Electricity Vietnam (EVN), the national power monopoly, when people start calling the company “Ong Dien” — Mr Electric. And especially so when they’re complaining about the rolling blackouts this summer. Continue reading »

Posted in China, Vietnam | Permalink

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