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[Mattingly]

I just found this on Reuturs. Attention Vietnam: Indonesia and even the Philippines do exist.

Vietnam downgraded:

[mark_in_saigon]

I am pasting excerpts from this story below. People with business backgrounds are probably mostly aware of these issues. What is very interesting to me is that the govt is allowing this newspaper the freedom to speak these very important truths. One of the big problems when attempting to allow a free market economic system is that being able to seek and speak the truth about the employees, businesses, industries and the government is necessary. If not, players cannot make good decisions, and the economy edges away from capitalism.

http://www.thanhniennews.com/index/pages/20120928-no-stock-market-recovery-on-the-horizon-experts.aspx

Investors are losing their confidence in the stock market as local companies are weak and lack transparency�warning that a recovery is unlikely to come next year.
Companies in Vietnam tend to expand into too many business activities, making themselves less competitive than foreign rivals and thus less appealing to investors�
The trend towards non-core sectors has left the country with a lot of weak firms�
� stocks plunged over concerns about the financial industry and the recent arrests of senior banking executives.
�the arrests at the bank, one of the country�s largest, [ACB] undermined investor confidence.
�The whole episode reminded investors that after years of sloppy management and exuberant lending, Vietnam�s banks are in dire shape; and that corruption and waste pervade the economy,� � listed companies are required to be transparent, but in Vietnam business executives care more about their own interest than sharing information with stockholders.
When investors have little faith in the managers of a company, it is very difficult to attract investment, � overall sentiment is weak, with companies delaying listing plans and brokerages reporting huge losses.
Official data show Vietnam�s gross domestic product grew 4.38 percent in the first half, compared with 5.63 percent a year earlier.
�credit growth has not rebounded even after the central bank cut its policy rates by five percentage points this year, possibly due to the rising level of non-performing loans in the banking system. �The lack of credit will in turn limit GDP growth,� ...
�Focus will then have to be on how policymakers can remove the bad loans from the banks� balance �
Foreign investors in Vietnam have to convert their dollar assets into the local currency, so a weakening dong means they will risk facing losses when they want to divest from the country later�
Even though the exchange rate has remained stable this year, the dong could fall if the government has to inject more money into the market to solve the country�s bad debt problem.
Vietnam�s economy will be affected by the global slump, and businesses in the country are highly indebted, he said.
�Many people had assumed that the economy will pick up in 2012 or 2013, but that is just groundless,� � investors should brace for worse things to come.

[8balldeluxe]

Hello, those are interesting articles. I saw this recently from Newsweek!. Any comments?

http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2012/10/01/vietnam-is-a-bad-example-to-newly-emerging-markets/

..."The number of container ships calling at the port and two other foreign joint ventures operated by Vinalines plunged by half in the second quarter amid a price war among other port operators struggling with unused capacity. And Vinalines is foundering under a huge load of debt and an embezzlement scandal that led to the arrest in July of six of its executives. After a three-month Interpol manhunt, Chairman Duong Chi Dung, once the head of the country�s maritime administration, was arrested abroad and extradited to Vietnam last month.

Vietnam, in short, has gone from global investment darling to poster child for mismanagement. Too much money flowed into the country over the past decade, particularly following its admission to the World Trade Organization in January 2007. Foreign direct investment that year surpassed the dollars going to Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and the rest of the region combined, according to the World Bank. The country�s creaky ....... institutions couldn�t absorb all the funds, leading to a textbook instance of what economists call capital misallocation. On Friday, Moody�s downgraded the creditworthiness of eight Vietnamese banks and cut the country�s credit rating to B2, the lowest ever.

�Vietnam offers a classic case of a small country that had greatness thrust upon it,� according to Ruchir Sharma, author of Breakout Nations and head of emerging-market equities at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in New York. �Its ...... were neither prepared nor competent to handle the huge inrush of foreign capital in the last decade.�

At first, the cash went to building what seemed like useful infrastructure, such as the Cai Mep port, roads, bridges over the Red River and the Mekong, and highways �though many show little sign of upgrades since the Americans left in 1973. Then it flowed into apartment buildings, including luxury residences. Many of these, particularly around Ho Chi Minh City, stand vacant or unfinished. And there were the industrial parks meant to house all those foreign manufacturers, built on the outskirts of cities by displacing rice paddies and pomelo farmers. Indeed, 20 of these parks covering some 3,645 hectares of former farmland were built in the Mekong Delta province of Cuu Long alone. Yet as of July, only 810 hectares of that space had been leased, according to a report in the official Vietnam News."......

[deadlift]

Just a quick tip for people interested in keeping up to date with this kind of news.

Go to https://news.google.com, search for 'Vietnam". At the bottom of the results page you can click on "create an email alert for Vietnam". Clicking this will allow you to create a regular email digest of the latest news stories. Some of them will be related to Vietnam veteran affairs in the US.

No doubt some here are already doing this, but it's a good little trick to know, for any topic.

[kona]

http://www.economist.com/node/21562968

"What is more, one independent economist, Nguyen Quang A, argues, even if these arrests do indeed herald a concerted campaign to get rid of corrupt bosses, it will barely scratch the surface of the country�s deep-rooted economic problems. The privileged place of the state enterprises�accounting for two-fifths of the country�s output�is chiefly responsible for all the graft, misallocation of resources and mad spending that drags Vietnam down. Foreign executives say it is a nightmare doing business there. The whole system needs changing, Mr A says, not just a few people thrown in jail."

-Is the VND still steadily depreciating for you guys, or has it leveled off yet?

[mark_in_saigon]