The Embassy of Spain in Vietnam has resumed the acceptance of the new-style Vietnamese passports on Monday, 8 August 2022 after its one week suspension. The Spanish Embassy said that it completed the mandatory technical consultations with the authorities in Spain and came to the conclusion that the new Vietnamese passport, in blue-violet color, includes the essential details required by international regulations. So far, Schengen countries except Germany and the Czech Republic still recognize the new passports as usual. Source: https://vietnamnews.vn/politics-laws/1276073/spain-recognises-viet-nam-s-new-passports-reversing-earlier-decision.html

A map shows the area allocated for the Eastern Economic Corridor for aviation (EECa), highlighted in yellow. (Source: Bangkok Post)- The Thai Government on August 9 approved the allocation of 165ha of land in the Eastern Airport City project to create a free-trade zone within the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), in a bid to attract investors and businessmen.As reported by the Bangkok Post, speaking after a weekly cabinet meeting, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said the free-trade zone will not be restricted by large numbers of laws and regulations, with waivers on customs tariffs and other import measures on offer.The area will also feature other activities and recreation facilities to support 24-hour services, including five-star hotels, shopping malls, duty-free shops, Michelin-starred restaurants, exhibition and convention halls, and entertainment services, the PM said.Airport City is located in the over 1,000ha economic zone for aviation, one of the EEC’s seven zones approved by the cabinet in March this year.According to deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek, the government has also offered tax perks to 24-hour entertainment providers and alcohol and cigarette distributors at Airport City, allowing them to be exempt from corporate income tax for a maximum of 15 years. The dividends available from their ventures will also be exempt from corporate income tax./.

Vietnam to face Singapore, India in September friendly football tournamentVietnam’s national football squad is scheduled to meet Singapore and India at an international international tournament held by the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) this September as part of the FIFA International Match Calendars. Vietnam will face Singapore on September 21 and India six days later, while the match between Singapore and India is slated for September 24. Thirty-five national digital platforms have been developed, of which 31 have become operational and four on a trial basis. The component projects will be carried out similar to Group A projects in accordance with the law on public investment and approved by the People’s Committee. The tardy public investment disbursement has caused major public projects to be postponed, according to Mãi, who attributed the tardiness to complicated administrative procedures.

The new passport version of Vietnam (Photo: Vietnam Government Portal)– The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) is planning to add the “place of birth” to the new passport version to facilitate citizens’ seeking of visas to the Schengen countries.The granting and use of the new passport will be among the issues about which Minister of Public Security Gen. To Lam will be questioned at the 14th session of the National Assembly Standing Committee on August 10.Compared to the old passport, the new version is produced by using modern technology to meet higher security requirements and standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), according to the MPS’s report sent to lawmakers prior to the meeting.Images of Vietnam’s typical landscapes and cultural heritages are featured in the new passport with the aim of introducing the country’s land and people to international friends, it noted.So far, the MPS has granted 272,000 passports of the new version.In the report, Lam said according to the ICAO regulations, compulsory information in a passport consists of the type of passport, full name, passport number, date of birth, sex, and passport expiration date. ICAO also gave detailed regulations on the design and layout of information on the page of personal details to ensure consistency among countries in the world.The new passport version has closely followed the above-mentioned rules and completely met international standards, the minister affirmed.Explaining why the new passport doesn’t contain information about the place of birth, he said ICAO did not designate other information like the place of birth as mandatory. According to the Law on Exit and Entry of Vietnamese Citizens, information in passports also doesn’t include the place of birth On that basis, the MPS issued the new passport version without the place of birth to facilitate citizens’ entry, he went on.Regarding some European countries’ refusal to grant visas on the new passports, Vietnamese authorities have worked with those countries and found that this is only a technical issue.Since a passport without information about the place of birth may cause difficulties for management in some countries, to create favourable conditions for Vietnamese citizens to seek visas to the 26 Schengen countries , the MPS and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have agreed to add the place of birth in the appendix of the new passport if its holders wish.In the long term, the MPS will revise the passport design and add the “place of birth” in the page of personal details, it noted, adding that it is collecting opinions about this issue from the parliament’s committees for defence - security and legal affairs, the Government Office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs./.

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)At the ceremony to release the report. (Photo: VNA)- Vietnam will need a skilled workforce to transform itself into an upper-middle-income economy by 2035, the World Bank has suggested in its recently-released report named “Taking Stock: Educate to Grow”.In its bi-annual report, the lender said: “Vietnam needs a workforce with 21st century skills to grow. As the economy moves from being driven by low skill and low wage jobs in manufacturing and services towards a more innovation driven growth model built on higher value-added industries and services, Vietnam’s workforce will need to attain higher level and more relevant skills.”The Vietnamese Government’s Socio-economic Development Strategy for 2021-2030 says as much, aiming to use scientific, technological, innovative, and digitally transformative knowledge and build quality human resources as key drivers of higher productivity and future economic growth. To achieve these goals, Vietnam needs to reform its education system to improve quality and access, and thus provide the necessary skills to the population, it affirmed.This edition also underlines transforming the higher education system as the key to boosting the country’s productivity and achieving its development goals, in the context where the country re-emerges from the pandemic and into a challenging global environment.The report’s co-author Dorsati Madani said that while Vietnam’s economic recovery had been relatively stable, not all sectors witnessed the same situation.The impact on workers and households during the crisis was serious and lasting, with about 45% claiming lower incomes in December 2021 than the previous year.The impact of the pandemic is still present with businesses reporting broad-based labour shortages as of March 2022, which were felt more acutely in services and manufacturing, and in the Ho Chi Minh City area.This, in addition to growth slowdown or stagflation in main export markets, further commodity price shocks, continued disruption of global supply chains, or the emergence of new COVID-19 variants, are hindering Vietnam’s full recovery.Statistics revealed that Vietnam ’s population has an average 10.2 years of schooling, second only to Singapore among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.Vietnam’s human capital index is 0.69 out of a maximum of 1, the highest among the lower middle-income economies.However, low skills relevance of the university graduates put the country in the bottom third of the 140 countries listed in the 2018 Competitiveness Index on skills relevance of university graduates.A WB skills and enterprise survey published in 2019 also said that 73% of sampled Vietnamese firms report difficulties in recruiting employees with leadership and managerial skills, 54% with socio-emotional skills, and 68% with job-specific technical skills.Focusing on tertiary and higher education, the WB’s report recommends reforming the education system to improve quality and access, and thus provide the necessary skills to the population.Reforms to Vietnam’s higher education system could help support development objectives, the report says.The increasing financial costs of pursuing higher education and the perception of diminishing economic returns from pursuing higher education have weakened demand.While efforts to enhance the business environment are crucial to enabling job creation, policymakers should also take steps to reduce skill-mismatches and improve the quality of Vietnam’s labour force.Carolyn Turk, WB Country Director for Vietnam, said: “To sustain economic growth at the desired rate, Vietnam needs to increase productivity by 2-3% every year.“International experiences have shown that higher worker productivity can be achieved by investing in the education system, as an important part of a basket of investments and reforms. A competitive workforce will generate much-needed efficiency for Vietnam in the long term.”In its report, the World Bank forecast Vietnam’s GDP growth to expand 7.5% in 2022 and 6.7% in 2023, with resilient manufacturing and a robust rebound in services serving as the driving forces for economic recovery./.

Secretary General of ASEAN Lim Jock Hoi speaks at the event. (Photo: VNA)Jakarta (VNA) – Secretary General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Lim Jock Hoi highlighted the achievements accomplished by a cohesive ASEAN amid the COVID-19 pandemic during the 55th ASEAN Day Celebration on August 8. ASEAN trade volumes have returned to pre-pandemic levels and the bloc’s economy is forecast to grow by 4.9% this year and 5.2% next year. The official underlined the need for ASEAN to accelerate its green agenda in areas such as sustainable climate, biodiversity, livelihoods, circular economy, and energy efficiency with renewable energy. “The past 55 years of ASEAN have shown that only by working together can we effectively deliver economic prosperity, social advancement, and long-lasting peace for our region," he said./.

Over the past more than five decades, ASEAN has become a community and a major economy in the world with extensive security-political and cultural-society cooperation. And Vietnam is always a proud responsible and active member with significant contributions to building an ASEAN Community as it is today.Vietnam officially joined ASEAN on July 28, 1995. on the occasion of the 28th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM-28) in Brunei. In particular, 2020 marks 25 years of its membership in ASEAN, and also its third ASEAN Chairmanship. : Addressing Challenges Together”, Vietnam continues to contribute proactively, behave positively and share the responsibility with other member countries to overcome challenges, maintain solidarity, continue the momentum of the Community building, promote regional connectivity, effectively respond to emerging challenges, and strengthen the central role and position and voice of ASEAN in the international arena.After 27 years, the economic and trade ties between Vietnam and ASEAN have seen outstanding developments. In 1996, when Vietnam joined the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), two-way trade between Vietnam and the other member countries was nearly 6 billion USD, but the figure increases six folds to around 60 billion USD at present.Notably, in the 2010-2021 period, trade between Vietnam and ASEAN has grown tremendously.

That said, at 51.2, down from 54.0 in June, the index signalled a softer improvement.As such, output, new orders and employment all increased at weaker rates than in June. New orders increased for the 10th month running, but the rate of expansion eased to the weakest since April. New export business rose solidly, meanwhile, and at a faster pace than total new orders.The continued growth of new orders encouraged manufacturers to keep expanding production in July. That said, the latest rise was still above the series average amid reports of higher costs for oil, gas and freight. Similarly, output prices continued to rise, but the rate of inflation slowed and was only modest.Suppliers' delivery times neared stabilisation as the rate of lead time lengthening softened for the second month running to the weakest in 22 months.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, revenue of exports was estimated at 32.3 billion USD, up over 12% year-on-year, while imports was estimated at 26 billion USD, up 1.6%. So far this year, Vietnam has enjoyed about 6.3 billion USD in trade surplus in agriculture, forestry and fishery products, nearly doubling that the same period in 2021. There were four items of exports whose value exceeded 2 billion USD, namely coffee, rice, shrimp, and wood products. The US remained Vietnam’s biggest buyer, purchasing nearly 8.7 billion USD worth of the products. It was followed by China with import value of 5.7 billion USD./.

A isolated Monkeypox treatment ward at a hospital in Ahmedabad in India. (Photo: AFP/VNA)Scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune are training experts from Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand to tackle monkeypox amidst escalating concerns over the disease.As part of India’s response to protecting its population from the new threat, NIV scientists are training their counterparts in these countries on testing, clinical symptoms, case definitions, sample collection, and equipment required for testing. NIV Pune has been conducting such training programmes for other countries from time to time, like it did during the COVID-19 pandemic and even before for biosafety and bio-risk mitigation, said Dr Pragya Yadav, a senior scientist at NIV Pune.If these countries develop the capacity to diagnose and detect monkeypox cases, that would enhance the screening of the suspected cases and reduce the travel-related importation of cases to other countries, he said.According to the scientist, some 139 participants from various countries participated in the last capacity-building programme which was launched on August 1.The institute does not only offer the capacity-building programme but also provides testing kits, reagents and probes for other countries upon request, said Prof., Dr Priya Abraham, Director of NIV Pune.Last week, the NIV lab isolated the monkeypox virus strain to help pharmaceutical companies to develop monkeypox vaccine and diagnostic kits. Besides this, the institute has been designated as a referral laboratory for testing suspected cases. In addition, 15 other ICMR-VRDL (Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratory) network laboratories have been optimised to undertake diagnostic testing for monkeypox disease.According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), as of July 27, around 18,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox globally from 78 countries and five deaths have been reported./.

In an interview with the Vietnam News Agency, Dr. Jonathan Choi said Vietnam has made a good decision on the pandemic as the country opened doors right after the situation got better. Therefore, the country has recovered “very quickly” after the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, adding that this is one of the reason many people are interested in investing in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Jesse Choi, the third generation to inherit and lead the group, said Vietnam’s startup ecosystem is one of the most vibrant in Southeast Asia, along with Indonesia and Singapore. Sunwah group has set up a Sunwah Innovation Center in Ho Chi Minh City and another in Hanoi. Jesse Choi noted that he will work more on innovation and continue to seek opportunities to expand the group’s operations in Vietnam./.

breast milk bank , the largest of its kind in Vietnam, is inaugurated at Hung Vuong Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City on August 6. (Photo: VNA)A breast milk bank, the largest of its kind in Vietnam, was inaugurated at Hung Vuong Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City on August 6.The facility with a total investment capital of 6 billion VND (256,500 USD) is able to pasteurise 62 litres of milk per day.This is the second breast milk bank in the South and one of four breast milk banks operating in Vietnam . Breast milk not only helps children grow up quickly and comprehensively, but also strengthens the immune system, especially in the period when the child’s immune system is not yet complete.Passive antibodies passed from mother to baby in breast milk will help the baby fight many infectious diseases in the living environment.Every year, the Neonatal Department of Hung Vuong Hospital takes care of thousands of premature, low birth weight and pathological babies mostly based on formula milk as there is no donated or stored breast milk. The establishment of the breast milk bank is highly appreciated providing milk to these unfortunate children. So far 17 mothers have donated 235 litres of raw milk to the bank.“We hope that many other mothers will know about the breast milk bank and volunteer to donate milk to help save the lives of other unfortunate children,” said Hoang Thi Diem Tuyet, Director of Hung Vuong Hospital ./.

Located about 7 kilometres from Van Ho district, Fairy, or Chieng Khoa, Waterfall is one of the most stunning and famous in the local area. The three-tier falls and calm turquoise water will keep visitors enchanted for a long period. Fairy Waterfall is a highlight of tourism in Van Ho district. It has helped improve local livelihoods and made a contribution to protecting forests. Recognised as a provincial-level relic site thanks to its jaw-dropping landscapes and diverse ecosystem, Fairy Waterfall has become a highlight in Van Ho district’s tourism development plan./.

Dự báo thời tiết ngày 6/8, khu vực miền Bắc vào đến Nghệ An tiếp tục dồn dập những cơn mưa to đến rất to, với lượng mưa cao nhất 100mm. Tây Nguyên và Nam Bộ mưa giông kéo dài.

ASEAN Indonesian economy posts higher growth in Q2 Indonesia’s economy expanded 5.44 % in the second quarter of 2022, up slightly from the 5.01% growth recorded in the first quarter according to Statistics Indonesia. World Malaysia to stop building coal plants from 2040 The Malaysian government will stop building coal power plants starting in 2040, and shift its focus toward clean and renewable energy, according to Minister in the Prime Minister’s department in charge of economy Mustapa Mohamed. World UK police announce identities of Vietnamese citizens reported missing in Manchester fire Greater Manchester Police on August 4 officially announced the identity of four Vietnamese citizens who had been reported missing in a blaze on May 7 in Bismark House Mill, in Oldham, Greater Manchester. ASEAN Malaysia disburses over 4 billion USD under wage subsidy programme Malaysia has disbursed 20.92 billion RM (4.72 billion USD) of wage subsidies through its Wage Subsidy Programme (PSU) to 357,895 employers, Finance Minister Zafrul Aziz said in the 105th People’s Financial Report released on August 4.