Heavy rain hits north Vietnam, Hanoi traffic halted

HANOI, July 20 (Reuters) - Heavy rain from a weakened tropical storm has hit northern Vietnam, causing flooding that brought traffic to a halt in the capital Hanoi and prompted the government to warn of landslides in mountainous areas.

Tropical storm Molave made landfall on Saturday along the southern coast of China, where it weakened before dumping torrential rain across Vietnam's northern mountainous provinces from late Sunday, the national weather centre said.

Provincial authorities should inspect residential areas facing a high risk of landslides and flash floods so they can be active in preventive measures, the government said in a report.

Floods and landslides early this month have killed 34 people and damaged hundreds of homes in seven northern provinces, an area also affected by Sunday's rain.

Up to 120 mm (4.7 inches) of rain also fell in the rush hour on Monday in Hanoi, knocking down trees and submerging streets, witnesses said. Traffic was chaotic at intersections, with flood waters hip-high in some areas, they said.

Flooding has become more frequent in Hanoi as the road and the drainage systems struggle to accommodate a rising population.

VietinBank shares slump on debut, still above IPO

* VietinBank shares fall maximum allowed on debut

* Still above December's IPO price but may fall further (Updates with market close, analyst's comment)

By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI, July 16 (Reuters) - Shares in VietinBank CTG.HM, Vietnam's fourth-largest lender by assets, fell the maximum allowed 20 percent from the starting level set by the bank on their stock market debut on Thursday.

However, the shares in the Hanoi-based bank were still double the average price of 20,265 dong at in its initial public offering (IPO) last December, and above the most recent prices on the unofficial and unregulated grey market.

The shares opened at 44,000 dong on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange and closed down 19.8 percent at 40,100 dong after touching the floor of 40,000 dong. That compares with the starting price of 50,000 dong set by the bank.

Dealers said the bank had set the opening price too high.

"The drop is fortunate for the market, because even at 40,000 dong per share the stock is overpriced," a trader at Baoviet Securities in Hanoi said.

The overall market was firm, with the benchmark VN Index .VNI closing 1.5 percent up at 433.47 points. It has risen 37.3 percent this year.

"The index should have risen more but VietinBank shares put a brake on it," said Tran Ngoc Tu, an independent market analyst.

"VietinBank shares will fall further, back to the IPO level if there is no good news," Tu said. "The bank's competitiveness is weak. It still relies on the state."

The state owned a dominant 89.23 percent stake as of July 3, its prospectus said. It listed 121.21 million shares on Thursday, 10.77 percent of its total.

The bank has said it would cut state ownership to 70 percent next year and sell 10 percent to strategic foreign investors.

It raised $64 million by selling a 4 percent stake in the IPO on Dec. 26. [ID:nHAN412752]

Companies in Vietnam often have their IPOs some time before they make their stock market debut.

They are then allowed to set the price at which the shares are first listed, and the stock is allowed to move 20 percent up or down that day, wider than the normal daily trading band of 5 percent.

38,000-39,000 dong on the grey market in May and early June before the bank applied for a listing licence.

Shares in VietinBank, or the Vietnam Bank for Industry and Trade, have joined those of major financial companies such as Vietnam's top insurer Bao Viet Holdings BVH.HM and leading partly private lender Vietcombank VCB.HM on the market.

Vietcombank also set its starting price at 50,000 dong for its June 30 debut but its shares proved more popular and jumped by the maximum 20 percent on the day. They have since fallen back and ended at 49,800 dong on Thursday. ($1=17,804 dong) (Editing by Alan Raybould and Lincoln Feast)

Want to predict the weather? Watch the dragonflies

HANOI, July 16 (Reuters Life!) - Can dragonflies warn of impending rain? Can you predict the weather by looking at the colour of a cloud or by observing animals? For generations of Vietnamese farmers and fishermen, the answer is yes.

Although the weather in Vietnam is forecast using hi-tech satellite imaging, many communities still predict floods, storms and drought the traditional way -- by tracking nature.

For example, in a drought prone area of the coastal Ninh Thuan province, farmers believe that if the dragonfly flies high it will be sunny and if it flies low there will be rain.

In north-central Thua Thien Hue Province, fishermen are likely to bring their boats back to the shore if, in January or February, they look to the north and see a silver cloud that quickly disappears, as it is a sign of cold weather.

Many of these beliefs, which are kept alive through proverbs, folk songs and legends and which have so far been passed down orally, are now being recorded by a group of aid agencies in the Southeast Asian country as part of a project to see whether they still hold true in times of rapid climate change.

"The communities know a lot about disaster adaptation and the question now, in Vietnam, is to see if this indigenous knowledge is still accurate or not with the climate changing very quickly," Guillaume Chantry, project coordinator of Development Workshop France (DWF), told Reuters.

Climate change is expected to hit low-lying Vietnam hard.

In April, the Asian Development Bank said by the end of this century, Vietnam's rice production could dramatically decline while rising sea levels could submerge tens of thousands of hectares of cropland and uproot thousands of families living in coastal communities.

For the next two months, a group of agencies led by DWF will visit 10 disaster-prone areas from the mountainous north to the steamy Mekong delta in the south to collect information about traditional beliefs in the hope it could be used in programmes to reduce the risk of natural disasters.

Dr. Ben Wisner, a hazards expert at Oberlin College, Ohio and London's University College, says indigenous knowledge can help make disaster prevention programmes more effective by pinpointing areas that are vulnerable to flooding and which are not visible on satellite images or official maps.

The idea of using local knowledge to create better ways to adapt to climate change and reduce the risk of natural disasters is slowly gaining ground as experts, scientists and aid workers scramble to find ways of predicting and dealing with the threat.

Critics dismiss traditional ways of reading the weather as backward and old-fashioned.

But, according to a U.N. report, during the devastating 2004 tsunami, the Moken nomads on the coast of Thailand were among other Asian communities that were largely spared, because they noticed the change in environment, using knowledge passed down through generations, and fled to higher ground.

"It's important for us practitioners to know how communities usually protect themselves," Chantry said.

Vietnam Urges Lenders to Tighten Credit

Vietnam's central bank said it is encouraging lenders to tighten credit for some borrowers in one of the first signs Asian economies are readying to rein in stimulus spending if the world economy continues to recover.

Like the U.S., China, Vietnam and other Asian nations have flooded their economies with cash over the past six months to avoid a deep recession. But as evidence mounts that the worst stage of the downturn is ending, many economists are advising governments to start curtailing credit lest some sectors overheat and trigger serious inflation problems in 2010 or beyond.

Economists are particularly concerned about Vietnam, a favorite of foreign investors in Asia that has experienced serious trouble with asset bubbles in the recent past, including a period when inflation soared to 28% in mid-2008. Although inflation is now below 4%, many analysts worry the government has gone too far to stimulate growth by subsidizing hefty bank lending programs that are feeding more money into the economy. Real estate and stock prices already have started to climb rapidly.

On Wednesday, State Bank of Vietnam Governor Nguyen Van Giau appeared to confirm those fears by saying the central bank wants local credit institutions to tighten lending to real estate and stock investors, as well as to consumers. He said lenders should focus instead on extending loans to small- and medium-sized enterprises to boost their production, and to major state-owned projects. Further details on the potential tightening, which appeared in a statement published in the central bank's Thoi Bao Ngan Hang newspaper, were not available.

"I think the key reason behind the central bank's comment is that it wants Vietnam to avoid high inflation," said Nguyen Duy Hung, chief executive of Saigon Securities Inc., a Ho Chi Minh City-based securities company.

Since the beginning of the global economic crisis, Vietnamese state banks have poured at least $19 billion in loans into the economy, equivalent to about one-fifth of the country's annual gross domestic product, as part of a broader stimulus program aimed at expanding credit for state enterprises and exporters. Partly as a result of the stimulus efforts, total outstanding loans in Vietnam's banking system at the end of June were 17% higher than at the end of 2008, and 17.5% more than a year earlier, the government said this month.

Unfortunately, economists say, it's hard for the government to police borrowers to know exactly how they are using the stimulus money. Many analysts suspect that large sums are leaking into activities the government doesn't want to stimulate, with borrowers taking money to speculate in stocks or real estate rather than investing in new productive capacity, though proving they are doing so is difficult. Since March, Vietnam's benchmark stock index is up more than 70%.

"I think it's the right decision" to begin reining in credit to some parts of the economy to make sure the money is used wisely, says Vu Thanh Tu Anh, an economist with the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City. It may difficult to do so, he said, unless policymakers take more concrete steps such as putting a cap on loan growth or raising interest rates. Asian governments remain wary of taking those kinds of steps because they are still uncertain about the outlook, despite recent signs of economic recovery.

Either way, the pressure to wind down some stimulus packages is growing. In a report released Wednesday, HSBC economists warned that "money's too loose in Asia" and raised the specter of new asset bubbles, especially in real estate. Although Asian countries generally aren't tightening credit yet, "it won't be long, I suspect" before they start doing so on a more widespread basis, says Tim Condon, an economist at ING in Singapore.

Wall Street Journal

Vietnam flood toll hits 28: officials

HANOI (AFP) — The death toll from flooding and landslides in mountainous northern Vietnam has risen to at least 28, authorities have said.

Most of the deaths were in Bac Kan and Lai Chau provinces, said the National Flood and Storm Control Committee, updating its previous figure of at least 22 deaths since heavy rains began on Friday.

Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Trieu Kiem Vang, a farmer in Bac Kan's Khen Len hamlet, as saying his two sons, their wives and two granddaughters were buried in a landslide.

There were also deaths in Cao Bang, Son La, Lao Cai and Ha Giang provinces, the flood committee said, listing three people as missing.

The storms destroyed nine bridges, flooded hundreds of houses and about 600 hectares (1,480 acres) of cropland, authorities said.

Security forces are assisting in the aid and rescue effort, state television reported.

Vietnam's flood and storm season generally starts in July and lasts until November.

Last year at least 550 people died in disasters triggered by bad weather, the national statistics office said earlier.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Vietnam's Sacombank H1 gross profit jumps 20 pct

HANOI, July 8 (Reuters) - Vietnam's Sacombank STB.HM, 10 percent owned by Australia's ANZ (ANZ.AX), said its first-half gross profit reached 905 billion dong ($51 million), up 20 percent from a year earlier, thanks to strong lending.

Sacombank, the country's sixth-largest lender by assets, said in a statement on Wednesday that its loans totalled 47.64 trillion dong at the end of June, up 36 percent from the end of last year.

The Ho Chi Minh City-based lender said its bad debt fell to 0.71 percent of loans last month from 0.76 percent in April.

Sacombank's credit growth in the first half was nearly double that in the entire Vietnamese banking system, which the central bank estimated at 17.01 percent. [ID:nHAN357450]

The lender's total assets reached 82.76 trillion dong at the end of June, 21 percent higher than at the end of 2008.

The World Bank's International Finance Corp, Dragon Capital and ANZ Bank together own 30 percent of Sacombank, the ceiling for foreign ownership of listed banks in Vietnam.

Sacombank has forecast that its gross profit would rise 47 percent this year to 1.6 trillion dong after a fall in 2008. [ID:nHAN369575].

Sacombank shares closed up 0.85 percent at 35,300 dong. ($1=17,760 dong)

Vietnam Aims to Achieve 2009 Growth of More Than 5%

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnam will boost production and exports in an effort to exceed the government’s 5 percent economic growth forecast this year, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in a statement on the government’s Web site.

The economy has avoided a recession and is “in a growing trend,” Dung said in the statement posted late yesterday. Gross domestic product expanded 4.5 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier after gaining 3.1 percent the previous three months, the government said last week.

Dung said in April Vietnam plans stimulus measures that the government values at about $8 billion to bolster growth. Ministries and companies have to use the packages more effectively in the second half to help the country meet its targets, he said in yesterday’s statement.

Vietnam will try to prevent inflation from accelerating to more than 8 percent at the end of this year, government office chief Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in another statement, also posted on the government’s Web site late yesterday.

The nation’s banking system lent a combined 372.3 trillion dong ($21 billion) to businesses as part of the government’s loan-subsidy program as of July 2, the central bank reported July 3. Vietnam posted credit growth of 17 percent in the six months ended June compared with the end of last year, the central bank said yesterday.

Vietnam sniffer dogs search for flood victims

PAC NAM, Vietnam (Reuters) - Vietnamese soldiers and police used sniffer dogs on Tuesday to search for victims of floods in the north of the country which killed at least 34 people.

Flash floods and landslides from heavy rain on Friday night hit eight northern mountainous provinces in one of Vietnam's most impoverished areas, with Bac Kan province topping the casualty list with 13 deaths.

Flooding and heavy rain late last week in neighbouring southern China forced 550,000 people to evacuate their homes and killed at least 15, Xinhua news agency reported.

The government said on Tuesday nearly 800 houses in seven provinces had been destroyed or submerged, while floods had damaged rice and corn crops, irrigation systems and roads.

Vietnam is often struck by floods and storms between July and October. The disaster area is far from Vietnam's main rice and coffee growing regions.

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Danger Signs Seen in Vietnam Stimulus

HANOI -- Vietnam boasts one of the developing world's most resilient economies this year, but economists fear the success masks serious problems, as loose state-directed lending risks pushing Vietnam into a new speculative bubble.

Those concerns were highlighted Tuesday, when Fitch Ratings downgraded Vietnam's local currency rating, citing "a steady deterioration in the country's fiscal position" and a banking system that's "vulnerable to potential systemic stress" as the government floods the economy with credit.

Similar worries affect the U.S. and China, which are under pressure to prepare to pull in the reins of government stimulus. But the fears are especially pronounced in Vietnam, one of the most-closely watched emerging economies and an increasingly important magnet for foreign direct investment. Much of its economy is dominated by state enterprises that have a history of making ill-advised investments outside their core businesses, which have contributed to past speculative behavior and bouts of overheating.

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, state banks have poured at least $19 billion in loans into the economy, equivalent to about one-fifth of the country's annual gross domestic product, according to the government. The money is a key plank of a stimulus program in which the state provides interest-rate subsidies to banks so they can make more loans to help state enterprises and exporters.

The measures appear to be paying off in the short term, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting growth of 3.3% this year, while neighbors such as Thailand and Malaysia face steep contractions.

On Wednesday, the government said GDP expanded 3.9% in the first half of the year compared with a year earlier, with growth accelerating to 4.5% in the second quarter from 3.1% during the first quarter. Vietnam's economy expanded 6.2% in 2008 and 8.5% in 2007.

Stock market prices are also sharply higher, with Vietnam's benchmark index up 86% since the beginning of March. Residential property prices are climbing in many parts of Hanoi, the capital, and Ho Chi Minh City, the center of commerce and home to the stock exchange, economists say.

Providing lots of credit is "a good strategy. Our stimulus measures force banks to lend productively," says Le Xuan Nghia, vice chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Commission, one of the country's main financial regulators.

But with so much money being funneled into the economy, many people on the street fear a return of inflation, which accelerated to 28% in mid-2008 before easing to 5.6% in May.

Many Vietnamese are responding by investing whatever cash they can scrape together as fears about inflation revive. In the dust-choked eastern suburbs of Hanoi, for instance, a property boom is in full swing. A series of state and privately owned companies are erecting an arc of satellite towns in the area to ease congestion in old Hanoi, where cars and delivery trucks struggle to squeeze past swarms of motor-scooters and bicycles.

Nguyen Thi Huyen, a broker for the Van Khe New Urban City project, says she is putting together 10 or more deals a month at the development, up from just two or three this time last year. Some units have changed hands five times or more and prices have risen six-fold since the project was launched at the peak of Vietnam's boom in 2007, she says.

Buyers are "worrying about inflation and want to invest their money somewhere safe," Ms. Huyen says, lighting a candle at a shrine in her office where several piles of facsimile $100 bills are stacked up for good luck.

Some economists in Vietnam fear the country's politicians are so enmeshed in their growth-oriented five-year economic plans that they won't be willing to turn off the stimulus tap until inflation has already reared its head again. In April, the government extended by two years a lending-stimulus program that pays four percentage points of interest on any loans by Vietnamese banks to the business sector, encouraging banks to lend more aggressively.

"They are trying to turn back the clock to 2006 and 2007, when the name of the game was exporting as much as possible to profligate Americans. But Americans might not resume spending again in the same way, and we could end up with a serious inflation problem again," says an economist with close knowledge of government thinking.

While the "government's been successful at stabilizing the economy" in recent months, officials "also need to consider the longer-term risks, such as excess liquidity in the banking system and its potential to spark inflation," says Tran Le Khanh, chief investment officer at Prudential Vietnam Fund Management, Prudential PLC's Vietnam fund business.

The World Bank cautioned the Vietnamese government in report last month that state-directed lending could be hampering overhauls at state enterprises, and Vietnam might instead want to focus on helping people who have lost their jobs in the downturn. "It might be good to pause and reflect whether sustaining economic activity should remain the single priority," the World Bank said.

Other analysts worry the lending spree could escalate bad debt problems in the banking sector. Officially, nonperforming loans stand at 2.6%, up from 2.2% at the end of last year. But Vietnam doesn't calculate bad-debt rates according to international standards. Fitch Ratings recently estimated the real figure may have been as high as 13% of total loans at the end of 2008. In its ratings downgrade Tuesday, it said the country's loan-subsidy program "is almost certain to make matters worse."

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Vietcombank H1 gross profit $138 mln -newspaper

* Vietcombank H1 gross profit is 75 pct of annual target

* H1 loans up 14 pct versus end-2008

* Bad debt down to 4.1 pct of loans (Adds details)

HANOI, July 1 (Reuters) - First-half gross profit at Vietcombank VCB.HM, Vietnam's largest partly private lender by assets, reached 2.45 trillion dong ($138 million), 75 percent of its annual target, a state-run newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The assets of the lender, which made its domestic share debut on Tuesday, reached 222 trillion dong as of June 30, practically unchanged from 221.95 trillion at the end of 2008, Chairman Nguyen Hoa Binh was quoted by the Securities Investment magazine as saying.

Binh said loans totalled 129 trillion dong at the end of June, up 14 percent from the end of 2008, and profit from lending made up 70 percent of the bank's first half gross profit, he told the Planning and Investment Ministry-run magazine.

Shares in Vietcombank closed up 0.8 percent at 60,500 dong ($3.4) on Wednesday. The stock jumped by the maximum 20 percent allowed on its debut, but the small size of its listing limited the impact on the main index, which ended lower. [ID:nSP466389]

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange index .VNI fell further on Wednesday, losing 4.08 percent. However, the index has still risen 36 percent this year.

Vietcombank's credit growth in the first six months was below the 17 percent in Vietnam's banking sector as a whole, according to central bank reports.

Binh said the lender had cut bad debt to 4.1 percent of loans from 4.6 percent at the end of 2008, and its capital adequacy ratio stood at 9 percent, above the 8 percent rate considered safe by the central bank.

About 3 percent of loans in Vietnam's banking sector are bad, a rate higher than last year, Wednesday's state-run media quoted Le Xuan Nghia, vice-chairman of the National Financial Supervisory Committee, as saying. ($1=17,800 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Alan Raybould)