Quang Nam Province in central Vietnam is a magnet for tourists with its ancient yellow wooden houses on the banks of the Thu Bon River in Hoi An City. Yet, very few know it is home to skillfully carved miniatures of Japanese and Hollywood animation characters. Young woodcarver Tran Duy, a native of the province, is putting a new twist on his family’s traditional craft by carving comic book superheroes from wood instead of conventional rural landscapes and gods. “I am not a big fan of manga, but there are some that I repeatedly read, like Dragon Ball,” the 25-year-old…
Author: Asia News Network
Vietnam’s index of industrial production (IIP) in the first quarter (Q1) continued to flourish with a year-on-year increase of 7.07 per cent, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said. The positive rise, much higher than the 6.44 per cent seen in Q1/2021, contributed 2.42 percentage points to the economy’s growth in Q1/2022. The processing and manufacturing industry had a yearly IIP rise of 7.79 per cent. Meanwhile, the IIP growth of the electricity production and distribution industry stood at 7.42 per cent, and water supply and waste and wastewater treatment and the mining industry reached 6.54 and five per cent, respectively.…
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is keeping pace with changing times by allowing the digital asset market to be in lockstep with the traditional capital market so they can have parallel growth, making it easier for all groups of investors. The SET plans to launch this year “Live Exchange”, a funding platform for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and start-ups, as well as facilitate the expansion and easier access to both investment and utility tokens. The Thai Digital Assets Exchange (TDX) will offer more flexibility to all groups of investors to facilitate investing in both traditional capital and digital…
The Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) People’s Committee wants changes made to a proposal to convert industrial parks and export processing zones into eco-industrial and high-tech zones by 2025. Earlier, the HCMC Industrial Parks and Export Processing Zones Authority (HEPZA) had submitted the plan for the committee’s approval with the aim of gradually weeding out labour-intensive firms and those using outdated technologies in Industrial Parks (IP) and Export Processing Zones (EPZ). It has instructed HEPZA to clarify certain requirements related to investment in high technologies by businesses. HEPZA should encourage enterprises in existing industrial zones to convert their businesses into…
South Korea’s aviation industry is gearing up for a full recovery of operations that were hit hard from the prolonged pandemic for more than two years as the flights resume along long-stalled mid- and long-haul routes. The transport ministry aims to increase the number of international flights this year to the 50 per cent level of 2019. As of March, the number of international flights departing the country was at 406 per week, around 8.8 per cent of the corresponding figure in 2019 when the number of international flights stood at 4,770. From March 21, South Korean nationals who are…
Trade between Laos and Vietnam is expected to grow this year even as the two countries continue to battle the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, and the spiralling price of fuel. The two governments have set a target to increase the value of year-on-year two-way trade by 10-15 per cent this year after the value of trade reached $1.34 billion in 2021, an increase of 30.2 per cent on the previous year. The value of exports between Laos and Vietnam in January and February this year rose to $195 million, while the import value was estimated at $60 million, according to the…
Vietnam aims to be one of the world’s leading countries in producing and exporting macadamia products by 2030. A 2021-2030 project approved by the government on March 15 aims to develop macadamia cultivation and processing sustainably over the next nine years. Under the scheme, the macadamia export value is hoped to reach about $400 million in 2030 and $2.5 billion in 2050, with the percentage of macadamia in shells being less than 40 per cent. In 2030, macadamia nut output is expected to reach about 130,000 tonnes and increase to about 500,000 tonnes in 2050. The country aims for 130,000-150,000ha…
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced on Monday that she will not seek a second term in the race scheduled for May 8 to elect the city’s next leader. At a media briefing, she said she had reported to the central government her intention not to run in the election and expressed gratitude for the central government’s trust in her. Lam’s term will end at the end of June. Lam said that until then, she will focus on four areas of work, namely, holding the election for the next chief executive, fighting the fifth wave of the…
The UN’s top climate science panel released a major report on April 4, outlining how nations can transform the global economy towards a safer future by cutting fossil fuel emissions that are endangering humanity and the planet. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak before 2025 to limit dangerous climate change. But it also says solutions are at hand, that nations are taking action and some key green technology costs have plunged in recent years. In short, there is hope, and climate policies can be positive for economic development.…
Vietnam will begin issuing vaccine passports from April 15, the Health Ministry announced on Monday. Vietnam has so far reached agreements on the mutual recognition of ‘vaccine passports’ with 17 countries, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They are: the US, UK, Japan, Australia, Belarus, India, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Maldives, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Singapore, Saint Lucia, and the Republic of Korea. Head of the ministry’s Department of Information Technology Do Truong Duy spoke during a teleconference held on Monday between the ministry and representatives of all 63 localities, urging the issuance of the vaccine…