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Posts Tagged ‘says’

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Biden says US may stay in Afghanistan after 2014

In Uncategorized on January 12, 2011 at 7:06 am

KABUL (AFP) – US Vice President Joe Biden stressed Tuesday that his country’s troops could stay in Afghanistan after 2014 if Afghans want them to, on day two of a surprise visit to the war-torn nation.


Speaking after talks with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Biden said: “We’re not leaving if you (Afghans) don’t want us to leave”.


But he also emphasised that the planned handover of responsibility for security from international troops to Afghan forces in four years, agreed at a NATO summit in November, was on track.

AFP file – US Vice President Joe Biden (C) talks with a US soldier as US General David Petraeus (2nd L) looks on at a US base in Maidan Shar Wardak province.


“It’s not our intention to govern or to nation-build — as President Karzai often points out, this is the responsibility of the Afghan people,” Biden told reporters at a press conference.


“We stand ready to help you in that effort and we’ll continue to stand ready to help you in that effort after 2014.”


A senior White House official said Biden was not announcing a change in policy.


“The vice president was simply restating for the public what he had said to the president (Karzai) which was that the United States wants an enduring partnership with Afghanistan,” the official said.


There are about 97,000 United States troops serving in Afghanistan as part of an international force of some 140,000.


Limited, conditions-based withdrawals are due to start in July ahead of the scheduled 2014 transition.


In 2010, coalition troops suffered their bloodiest year yet in Afghanistan with 711 deaths, according to the icasualties.org website, while opinion polls suggest increasing numbers of Americans want their troops to come home.


Biden said Afghanistan was now in a “new phase” and insisted that Taliban momentum had been “largely arrested” in key areas such as the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.


His comments came despite several recent attacks in the south, seen as the focus of the war, including a suicide bombing at a bath house in Kandahar province last week which killed 17 people.


“We have a strategy and the resources in place to accomplish the goal of a stable and a growing and an independent Afghanistan able to provide for its own security,” Biden said.


But he added that gains made were “fragile and reversible and the president knows that sustaining them is going to require the Afghans to improve… security and governance”.


Karzai said he and Biden had held one-to-one talks that lasted one hour and 45 minutes.


“We discussed the transition process in 2014 and how best to proceed with it. We had a good discussion, it made me happy,” Karzai told the press conference, which came a day after Biden’s surprise arrival in Afghanistan.


Biden held talks and had lunch with Karzai after visiting a training facility for Afghan security forces just outside Kabul. He later met US troops serving in Wardak province, central Afghanistan, plus local officials.


Shortly after arriving late Monday, Biden spent nearly two hours with the commander of international troops in Afghanistan, US General David Petraeus, and US ambassador Karl Eikenberry.


A US official travelling with Biden said the vice president’s trip came at a “pivot point” for the US in Afghanistan, adding it would allow Biden to review progress towards handing responsibility for security to Afghan forces.


The complex relations between the Western-backed government in Kabul and the US were laid bare by recent comments by Karzai accusing foreign countries of meddling in Afghanistan.


And last month, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks published leaked cables in which Eikenberry described Karzai as sometimes “paranoid and weak”.


The ambassador also reportedly highlighted corruption among key government officials in Afghanistan.


The visit, Biden’s first to Afghanistan since taking office, was not pre-announced due to security concerns, although Karzai was informed of the trip last week, the US official told reporters.


Biden’s trip began four days after the US announced it was sending an extra 1,400 Marines to southern Afghanistan, seen as the heart of the Taliban insurgency, in a bid to pre-empt an expected spring offensive in April or May.

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Source: SGGP

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Iran says can make own nuclear fuel plates, rods

In Uncategorized on January 8, 2011 at 12:01 pm

Atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi declared in a report Saturday that Iran is now capable of making its own nuclear fuel plates and rods, technology the West says the Islamic republic does not possess.

Two Iranian technicians at the zirconium production plant inside the Isfahan nuclear facility

Salehi, the driving force behind Iran’s contentious atomic programme, said the country has completed the construction of a facility in the central city of Isfahan to the fuel plates and rods which power nuclear reactors.


“We have built an advanced manufacturing unit in the Isfahan site for the fuel plates,” Salehi, who is also acting foreign minister, told Fars news agency in what was said to be an exclusive interview.


“A grand transformation has taken place in the production of (nuclear) plates and rods. With the completion of the unit in Isfahan, we are one of the few countries which can produce fuel rods and fuel plates.”


Salehi said it was the Western policies towards the Islamic republic which had propelled its nuclear achievements, including the making of nuclear plates and rods.


“This is in fact because of West’s actions that we came to this point,” he said.


“What we say is based on reality and truth. There is no exaggeration or deception in our work. It is them who do not want to believe that Iran has no intention, but to obtain nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.”


The West led by the United States suspects that Iran’s nuclear programme masks a weapons drive, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.


On November 23, Salehi had told state news agency IRNA that Iran would produce the nuclear fuel required for a research reactor in Tehran by September 2011.


“By the month of Shahrivar next year (September 2011), we will produce fuel for the reactor,” said Salehi, who is also one of Iran’s vice presidents.


Western powers have repeatedly said Iran does not possess the technology to make the actual nuclear fuel plates required to power the Tehran research reactor which makes medical isotopes.


In February 2010, Iran started refining uranium to 20 percent with the purpose of using it to make the plates that could power the reactor.


That came amid a deadlock with world powers over a nuclear fuel swap deal drafted by the UN atomic watchdog and aimed at providing fuel for the research unit.


Salehi told Fars Iran has now produced nearly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of uranium enriched to the 20-percent level, despite Western calls for Tehran to suspend the work.


“We have nearly 40 kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium,” he said in the interview.


The Islamic republic is under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, the process at the centre of fears about Iran’s atomic work.


Enriched uranium can be used as fuel to power nuclear reactors as well as to make the fissile core of an atom bomb.


Salehi’s latest declaration comes ahead of the next round of talks in Istanbul between Iran and the six world powers over Tehran’s nuclear programme.


On Friday, an aide to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the talks could resume from January 20.


“It’s a tentative date we’re looking at… We have positive feedback from Iran,” Ashton’s spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told AFP, adding the talks were expected to last one and half days.


A previous round of talks between Iran and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany — spearheaded by Ashton, took place in Geneva on December 6-7.


That round followed a 14-month hiatus in the talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.



 

Source: SGGP

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WikiLeaks says US grand jury requests supporter Twitter data

In Uncategorized on January 8, 2011 at 12:01 pm

WikiLeaks said Saturday the Twitter accounts of four supporters had been subpoenaed in connection with an espionage investigation into the whistleblowing website led by a secret US grand jury.


WikiLeaks, which began releasing 251,287 US diplomatic cables in November, added it had reason to believe Facebook and Google had also received court orders requesting details on users.


“Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into Wikileaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.


WikiLeaks said legal action taken by micro-blogging website Twitter “revealed that the US State Department has requested the private messages, contact information, IP addresses, and personal details of Julian Assange and three other individuals associated with WikiLeaks, in addition to WikiLeaks’ own account, which has 634,071 followers”.


It did not name the three other people, but Icelandic lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir said on her Twitter feed on Saturday US authorities had asked Twitter to submit her account details and personal information.


“Just got this: Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account in (relation to wikileaks),” the media freedom champion posted overnight.


“The request for my tweet information is from the US department of justice.” “The request for information from twitter is also for my personal information not just tweets,” she said.


Jonsdottir — a close associate of WikiLeaks who in September suggested Julian Assange step aside as the site’s spokesperson because of rape allegations against him — said she discussed the request with Iceland’s justice minister.


“He is looking into the case of demands of DoJ (department of justice) wanting my twitter details,” she posted shortly after 1100 GMT Saturday.


She explained she had 10 days to stop the legal process and stressed the US Department of Justice, not Twitter, was to blame.


WikiLeaks said Saturday it was “opposing the subpoena order and is currently taking action to instruct US lawyers”.


It urged Twitter to protect its users’ private information and stressed that other than Assange, the three people whose accounts had been subpoenaed had never worked for the site.


“Two were instrumental in helping WikiLeaks bring the Collateral Murder video — which showed a US helicopter crew celebrating as they gunned down civilians — into the public domain,” WikiLeaks said.


The April 2010 release of the classified video, which shows a US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed several people in 2007, helped push WikiLeaks into the global spotlight.


The site has since angered the Pentagon by posting in July 2010 secret documents on the war in Afghanistan, followed in October by a massive leak of so-called “Iraq war logs”.


Its November release of US diplomatic cables has embarrassed governments worldwide and prompted many calls for WikiLeaks to face legal action.


The site has also faced financial pressure when credit card giants Visa and Mastercard said they would stop facilitating donations to the website.


“Having tried to silence WikiLeaks by pressuring Paypal, Visa and Mastercard to cut off funds, the US government is now intruding into the private lives of some of WikiLeaks most high-profile supporters,” WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange said Saturday.


Assange, the 39-year-old Australian who is the public face of WikiLeaks, is currently on bail in Britain facing extradition proceedings to Sweden on charges of sexual assault.


 

Source: SGGP

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Autism-vaccine study was a ‘fraud’, journal says

In Uncategorized on January 8, 2011 at 4:14 am

A study that unleashed a major health scare by linking autism to a triple vaccine was “an elaborate fraud,” the British Medical Journal (BMJ) charged Thursday.


Blamed for a disastrous boycott of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine for children, the 1998 study was retracted by The Lancet last year.


Hundreds of thousands of children in Britain are now unshielded against these three diseases, said the BMJ.


In 2008, measles was declared endemic, or present in the wider population much like chicken pox, in England and Wales.

File photo shows a boy with autism at a Special Education and Training Center in Chengdu, China

After a long-running hearing by the General Medical Council, the study’s senior author, Andrew Wakefield was barred from medical practice in 2010 for conflict of interest and the unethical treatment of patients involved in the research.


But the BMJ, taking the affair further, on Thursday branded the study a crafted attempt to deceive, among the gravest of charges in medical research.


The findings had been skewed in advance, as the patients had been recruited via campaigners opposed to the MMR vaccine, the journal added.


And, said the BMJ, Wakefield had been confidentially paid hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars, euros) through a law firm under plans to launch “class action” litigation against the vaccine.


“The paper was in fact an elaborate fraud,” the BMJ said in an editorial, adding: “There are hard lessons for many in this highly damaging saga.”


It pointed the finger at Wakefield, then a consultant in experimental gastro-enterology at London’s Royal Free Hospital.


Wakefield and his team suggested they had found a “new syndrome” of autism and bowel disease among 12 children.


They linked it to the MMR vaccine, which they said had been administered to eight of the youngsters shortly before the symptoms emerged.


Other scientists swiftly cautioned the study was only among a tiny group, without a comparative “control” sample, and the dating of when symptoms surfaced was based on parental recall, which is notoriously unreliable. Its results have never been replicated.


The controversy unleashed a widespread parental boycott of the jab in Britain, and unease reverberated also in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.


The BMJ, delving into the accuracy of the study as opposed to its ethics, said Sunday Times investigative journalist Brian Deer had “unearthed clear evidence of falsification”.


Not one of the 12 cases, as reported in the study, tallied fully with the children’s official medical records, it charged.


Some diagnoses had been misrepresented and dates faked in order to draw a convenient link with the MMR jab, it said.


Of nine children described by Wakefield as having “regressive autism,” only one clearly had this condition and three were not even diagnosed with autism at all, it said.

Deer, in a separate piece published by the BMJ, compared the scandal with the “Piltdown Man” hoax of 1953, when a supposed fossil of a creature half-man, half-ape turned out to be a fake.

The Wakefield study “was a fraud, moreover, of more than academic vanity. It unleashed fear, parental guilt, costly government intervention and outbreaks of infectious disease,” he said.

Wakefield, who still retains a vocal band of supporters, has reportedly left Britain to work in the United States.

Wakefield and his publishing agent did not respond to calls and emails from AFP requesting comment.

Wakefield has previously accused Britain’s General Medical Council (GMC) of seeking to “discredit and silence” him and shield the British government from responsibility in what he calls a “scandal.”

The Lancet told AFP it would not comment on the BMJ accusations.

Autism is the term for an array of conditions ranging from poor social interaction to repetitive behaviours and entrenched silence. The condition is rare, predominantly affecting boys, although its causes are fiercely debated.

Source: SGGP

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Iran says 11 members of Sunni militant group hanged

In Uncategorized on December 21, 2010 at 9:34 am

TEHRAN, Dec 20, 2010 (AFP) – Iran on Monday hanged 11 members of Sunni militant group Jundallah which claimed last week’s devastating suicide bombing of a Shiite mourning procession, a judiciary official said.


“This morning 11 members of those belonging to (Jundallah), who in recent months were involved in terrorist attacks in the province (Sistan-Baluchestan), fighting with police, and martyring several innocent people have been hanged in Zahedan jail,” Ebrahim Hamidi, head of the provincial justice department, told state news agency IRNA.


Jundallah (Army of God) is a shadowy Sunni militant group which has claimed several deadly attacks in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, including a December 15 suicide bombing in the city of Chabahar which killed 39 people and wounded dozens.

An Iranian baker displays loaves of bread at a bakery in central Tehran on December 19, 2010 as the Iranian government began to implement its controversial plan of scrapping subsidies on energy and food products as part of the reforms which had been in the pipeline for several years. AFP

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Source: SGGP

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Australia says little hope of more survivors from boat wreck

In Uncategorized on December 17, 2010 at 8:57 am

SYDNEY, Dec 17, 2010 (AFP) – Australia said Friday there was little hope of finding more survivors from a people-smuggling boat which smashed into Christmas Island two days ago and that the full death toll may never be known.


Prime Minister Julia Gillard said divers had recovered two more bodies, bringing the official death toll to 30, as air and sea searches continued for survivors after their wooden fishing boat sank early Wednesday.


“We do need to face the grim reality that it is becoming increasingly unlikely, an increasingly remote possibility, that survivors will be found at this stage,” she told reporters in Sydney.


“It remains unclear exactly how many people were on the vessel and we may never know that number with precision,” she said, adding that three Indonesian crew were among the 42 survivors.


The wooden fishing boat crowded with up to 100 Iraqi, Kurdish and Iranian asylum seekers and their families was dashed against jagged rocks in dangerous seas at the remote Indian Ocean outpost early on Wednesday, throwing all on board into the churning water.


Of those pulled alive from the sea, five were evacuated to Perth for medical treatment while the rest were being treated on Christmas Island, which lies 2,600 kilometres (1,612 miles) from the mainland.


Australia has a policy of mandatory detention of boat people and uses Christmas Island as its main processing facility to determine whether they are legitimate refugees.


While boats are often picked up as they attempt to make their way to the island, Gillard said authorities had not been aware that this particular boat was approaching.


“The people smuggling vessel was not sighted until it was sighted from Christmas Island itself by residents,” she said, adding that Australia’s sea patrols covered a massive area.


“If we look at the amount of ocean that lies to our north, the area that we seek to keep under watch, the area in which we are most likely to see asylum seeker vessels, that area is more than 1.4 million square nautical miles.


“Consequently I think people would understand, with such a big area, that it is possible for a boat to get to Christmas Island and not be detected.”


The tragedy has sparked renewed debate on Asia’s people smuggling trade, which has brought more than 5,000 asylum seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to Australia this year, mostly on unseaworthy vessels from Indonesia.


Gillard said that Australian authorities were working closely with the people smuggling task force from the Indonesian National Police, but did not specify where she believed the boat had come from.


Indonesian police said there was no criminal element to the boat wreck, while Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Michael Tene said Jakarta had no comment on the latest loss of life involving asylum seekers in the waters between Java and the Australian mainland.


Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to get tough with the smugglers during a visit to Australia earlier this year, and Gillard raised the issue when she visited Jakarta last month.


Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the government would stick to its strategy of attempting to create a regional processing centre, possibly in East Timor, aiming to break the people-smuggling rings operating in Asia.


Australia has said Wednesday’s accident will be the subject of a criminal investigation and a coroner’s probe.

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Source: SGGP

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Vinamilk among best under-a-billion firms, Forbes Asia says

In Uncategorized on December 16, 2010 at 10:07 am

Vietnam’s biggest dairy maker Vinamilk was named for the first time ever as one of the best small-to-midsize performers in the Asia-Pacific region in the Forbes Asia’s “Best Under A Billion” list this year.

Shoppers picks Vinamilk’s products at a HCMC-based super market (Photo: sanvatbavi.com.vn)

Vietnam Dairy Products, known as Vinamilk, which holds a one-third share of Vietnam’s US$1.5-billion dairy market, enjoyed a net profit jump of 67 percent to $90 million. Its revenues climbed by half to $389 million through the first half of 2010, Forbes reported.


The company listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange with the coded name of VNM is expected to grow 25 percent this year.


“With revenues doubled and net profit up fourfold in the last four years, it is the most successful of the country’s privatized state-owned enterprises,” according to the September issue of Forbes Asia. In August, Vinamilk began construction on a $120 million dairy plant near Ho Chi Minh City that is expected to be the biggest in Southeast Asia.


“Vinamilk has been successful in the competition with foreign brands. It has created a very strong Vietnamese brand, a solid footing in the local market, and it has been able to tap into the rising demand for nutrition products,” Trinh Hoai Giang, chief operating official of HSC Securities, one of Vietnam’s three biggest brokerage houses, said in a report on Forbes’ website.


The annual “Best Under A Billion” list highlights 200 top-performing firms with revenues under $1 billion from nearly 13,000 publicly listed Asia-Pacific companies, based on earnings growth, sales growth, and shareholders’ return on equity.


Among 200 top-performing small-to-midsize enterprises in Asia this year are 71 Chinese, 39 Indian, 20 Korean and nine Thailand’s. “Technology firms, both hardware and software, keep making inroads into the 200, along with health-care-related entities,” Forbes said in a report on its website, adding 151 new firms appeared on this year’s list.

Source: SGGP

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REIT best choice for Vietnam’s property market, says conference

In Uncategorized on December 16, 2010 at 9:34 am

The model of real estate investment trust (REIT) funds should be applied into the rapidly growing real estate market in Vietnam, said economists at a conference on developing residential housing and property market in Hanoi last week.

(Photo: Minh Tri)

Real estate investment trusts (REIT) are booming, with an average profit of around 3-5 percent, Abas A. Jalil, director of the property investment fund AmanahRaya-REIT Managers, said at a conference in Hanoi.


REIT funds focus on leasing lands, buildings, and expanding their property investments to generate as much profit as possible to their shareholders.


Singaporean economist Professor Habibullah Khan said REIT are more competitive in his country. There are three kinds of real estate investment trust, including equity REIT, mortgage REIT and hybrid REIT.


Equity REITs invest in various types of income-producing commercial properties. The income is then shared in investor dividends. Profit will be based on numerous criteria including what type of property it is and how much income it generates.


Mortgage REITs either buy up pools of mortgages made by others or make mortgage loans directly.


A hybrid REITs are merely a REIT that invests both in actual real estate properties and mortgage loans. Most of REIT funds in Singapore are equity REIT, Professor Habibullah Khan said.
Phan Thanh Mai, general director of the property investment fund VPREIT, said REIT funds in Vietnam also developed strongly in the last five years. However, their investment in residential housing market remained low.


Most of investments poured into the housing market were from banks and individual buyers, Mai said. Therefore, he recommended that REIT funds should be allowed to mobilize capital from individuals.  


Statistics showed there were around 10,800 hotels with 210,000 offices, 98 resorts with 8,150 rooms nationwide so far this year. Deputy Construction Minister Nguyen Tran Nam said the local property market remained an attractive destination to foreign investors.


Foreign investors have invested 500 real estate projects with the total investment of more than $40 billion since the end of last year. The outstanding property loans at commercial banks reached VND210.77 trillion ($10 billion) on July.


However, property investors still have to cope with illegal transactions, significant price fluctuations caused by speculation, ineffective land use managements and poor town planning.

Source: SGGP

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N.Korea says ‘no-one can predict consequences’ of US drill

In Uncategorized on November 27, 2010 at 1:50 pm

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea state media warned on Saturday that “no-one can predict the ensuing consequences” if a US carrier group goes ahead with a planned drill with the Republic of Korea (RoK) in the Yellow Sea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (C) visits the newly-built Soy Sauce Shop at the Ryongsong Foodstuff Factory in North Korea in this undated picture released by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency on November 24, 2010

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) statement came days after the hardline communist regime sharply heightened regional tensions with an artillery attack that killed two marines and two civilians on a RoK border island.


The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS George Washington and its battle group plans four days of exercises from Sunday with a flotilla of RoK warships in a show of force meant to deter Pyongyang.


The KCNA report labelled the United States “the arch-criminal who orchestrated the recent military clash”, in which RoK on Tuesday returned artillery fire at the North.


The report repeated Pyongyang’s claim that it attacked in response to RoK conducting a military exercise that lobbed shells into waters that the North regime regards as its own.


The KCNA report argued that its own “counter-shelling” was “a resolute and proper retaliation against the reckless military provocation of the enemy”, and argued that the US was then quick to take advantage of the clash.


“No sooner had the Yeonpyeong incident occurred than the US announced that it would stage joint naval exercises with the RoK puppet forces with nuclear-powered carrier George Washington,” the report said.


It went on to warn: “If the US brings its carrier to the West Sea of Korea at last, no one can predict the ensuing consequences”, using the Korean term for the Yellow Sea.


KCNA also said two civilian deaths from its artillery strike on the South were “if true… very regrettable” but also charged they had been used as “human shields” by being placed near artillery positions.



 

Source: SGGP

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Selling dollars to essential-product importers only, says SBV

In Uncategorized on November 27, 2010 at 11:20 am

The State Bank of Vietnam will keep close eyes on selling dollars to essential-product importers at local lenders as it continues to sell the greenback until the end of the year, said vice governor.

A cash teller at the HCMC-based ACB Bank poses piles of dollars. (Photo by Minh Tri)



 


Surge in the foreign exchange rate of Vietnam dong and US dollar on the so-called black market was halted after the State Bank of Vietnam announced it would sell dollars to the market.


 


The Vietnam dong is VND21,260 per dollar on 22nd November on the so-called black market, edging up VND260 in the last two weeks.


 


Despite the central bank’s announcement, local businesses said they struggled to buy the greenbacks from local banks.


 


They explained that they had to exchange the greenback on the so-called black market at the rate of VND20,500-21,260 per dollar, VND500-1,400 higher than local lenders’ announced rate. 


 


Central bank Vice Governor Tran Minh Tuan promised that the state bank will continue to sell dollars to local importers trading essential products, mainly in medicine, steel and sugar, until year end in accordance with the government’s instructions.


 


The state lender sold US$300 million to the market in the first two weeks this month and will continue to sell more, Mr. Tuan said. “The government’s had to use dollars from inward remittance and foreign investments to fill up the trade deficit for many years. Therefore, exporters should also support the domestic greenback supply by selling back dollar to local lenders,” the vice governor said.


 


Mr. Tuan also said that the central bank supervises the dollar selling at local lenders by setting up supervisory teams.


 


The State Bank of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City branch last week helped 14 importers trading essential productions to get loans with preferential interest rates.


 


However, some commercial banks still shunned the central bank’s regulation, selling dollars to some importers to trade luxury cell phones, cosmetics and even some agriculture products that can be produced in local market, according to Ho Huu Hanh, director of the central bank’s Ho Chi Minh City.


 


“It’s hard to find out good clients during tough times. Therefore, we hardly turn down a dollar buying requirement from big clients, who want to import non-essential products,” a director of a local lender, who asked not to be named, said.


 


“On the other hand, we also hesitate to sell dollars to importers trading essential products as we don’t know much about the company’s business status,” he added.


 

Source: SGGP