Farmers abandon cashew crops

Many cashew farmers in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) have turned their backs on the crop that pulled them out of poverty and switched to others because of declining yields and volatile prices in the last few years.

Though the region remains one of the country's major cashew growing areas, farmers blame ageing trees, diseases, low-quality strains, and unfavourable weather were the major reasons for the fall in yields.

In what is still a poor area, cashews helped many farmers escape poverty and even become prosperous Hung Huy, a farmer in Dak Nong Province's Dak Min District who has cut down his three-hectare cashew orchard to grow coffee, said: "In recent years my annual yield fell relentlessly from three tonnes of nut per hectare to 1.5 tonnes and then to a few hundred kilograms."

The trees' age and diseases were the major causes, he said.

Dieu Hen of Dak R'Lap District, which has the largest area under cashew in Dak Nong Province, has cut down more than half of his 5ha cashew orchard to grow other plants.

Until 2007 the weather had been favourable and cashew suffered less from diseases, so he harvested 14 tonnes a year.

The price of the nuts was also high and his family earned profits of more than VND300 million (US$14,000) a year to escape poverty and become wealthy.

However, in recent years, when the cashew crop enters the blossoming period, there are hoarfrost and unseasonable rains, affecting fruit bearing, he said.

The area under cashew in Dak R'Lap has fallen from more than 7,000ha to around 6,000ha now, according to the district Agriculture and Rural Development Bureau.

Pham Quang Vuong, deputy head of the bureau, said many farmers use traditional methods to grow cashew and do not apply modern technologies, leading to poor quality.

Prices have not been stable in the past few years, with dramatic declines in some of them, he said.

At the same time the cost of inputs like fertilisers, pesticides, and labour have increased, leaving many farmers with bad losses, he said.

In 2001 the Gia Lai Province People's Committee decided to increase the area under cashew in Krong Pa District to 10,000ha. But the district only has 4,597ha, mostly in Uar, Ia Rsai, and Chu Rcam communes.

Dinh Xuan Duyen, head of the Krong Pa Agriculture and Rural Development Bureau, said: "Only Uar still has a large area under cashew (930ha), and many farmers are no longer interested in cashew."

The Central Highlands has around 83,900ha of cashew, down 20,700ha from 2010, according to official statistics.

To improve yields and prevent the cashew cultivation area from shrinking, the Dak Nong Province Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has implemented several measures, including zoning the cultivation area for up to 2015.

It has also instructed its district-level offices to consult local authorities and make plans to help cashew farmers make over their orchards, including by providing high-quality strains to replace old ones.

Gia Lai Province plans to have 25,000ha under cashew by 2015 compared to 20,000ha now.

The Gia Lai People's Committee has ordered a review of the situation to undertake measures to improve cashew strains.

It has also encouraged and create favourable conditions for cashew processors to sign purchase contracts with farmers.

The Gia Lai Research and Experimental Centre for Irrigation and Agriculture and Forestry has researched into ways to increase yields in the major cashew-growing districts of Krong Chro, Krong Pa and Ia Grai.

 ‘Help each other' pig farmers told

Pig farmers in southern Dong Nai Province, which has the country's largest swine population, must increase co-operation among themselves as they struggle with losses over the last several months, experts say.

At a meeting held in the south-eastern province late last month to discuss the problems and find solutions, several participants stressed that mutual co-operation would help pig farmers reduce production costs, prevent diseases and fight rumours that are negatively impacting the livestock industry.

Pig farmers in Dong Nai have been suffering losses over the past four months because pork prices have fallen from VND50,000-52,000 a kilo in March to VND38,000-40,000 at present.

The main reasons for this are the spreading of rumours that the farmers were using banned chemicals in their animal feed and there has been an outbreak of the blue-ear disease that affects pigs.

"The current prices are about VND5,000-7,000 per kilo lower than the production cost, and farmers are hurting badly," the meeting heard.

Nguyen Thi Sao, who owns a pig farm in Thong Nhat District's Gia Tan Commune, said she sold about 50 pigs every month and the selling price was VND36,000-38,000 a kilo over the past four months.

"Although I breed piglets and make animal feed by myself, I am still suffering losses of VND20 million a month," she said.

"If pork prices do not rise in the coming weeks, I will have to cutback production to reduce losses," she added.

La Van Kinh, deputy head of the Institute of Agriculture Science for the south, said relevant departments and agencies in the province should improve disease prevention knowledge among farmers and help them increase productivity of sows to reduce production cost.

Over the past years, the blue-ear disease has broken out mostly among pigs raised by households who did not provide proper care and vaccinations for the animals, he said.

This year, the disease has appeared mostly in sites that have experienced outbreaks earlier, he said.

Several pig farmers said that animal feed accounted for 70 per cent of production costs and most materials needed to make it were imported. Hence it was difficult to reduce the price of animal feed.

They called on the Government to set up large areas to produce raw materials used in making animal feed so that production costs of raising pigs could be reduced.

Nguyen Dien Tuong, director of the Dong Nai Agricultural Livestock Products JSC, which has about 20,000 pigs, said he hoped the Government would reduce the import tax on raw materials used to make animal feed and put up technical barriers for imported meat.

Pham Minh Dao, deputy director of the Province's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said pig farmers should cooperate with each other in order to ensure stable development of the husbandry sector.

Big farms should cooperate in producing healthy strains and good quality animal feed, establishing and maintaining hygienic slaughterhouses, and setting up raw material producing areas in the province to reduce production costs, he said.

Dong Nai is estimated to have 1.2 million pigs in stock at present.

Plan to lift tea exports, prices
 
Viet Nam hopes to increase its tea-export prices to the world average and double export turnover by 2015.

Nguyen Quoc Vong from RMIT University Viet Nam, said a national tea committee should be set up to create a legal system, define production standards and generally manage the sector's development.

The proposal was well received by representatives from north-western provinces with large areas under cultivation – Lao Cai, Yen Bai and Tuyen Quang.

However, other planters said the foundation of a national committee was not necessary. They believed it would be more practical to enhance the capacity of the existing Viet Nam Tea Association (Vitas).

According to Vitas President Doan Anh Tuan, low production from small-scale farms, poor quality maintenance and loose links between enterprises and planters were headaches for the sector.

Tuan said 65 per cent of tea growing areas were under the management of planters, but output was only about 70 per cent of that of the bigger enterprises.

Nguyen Duy Thinh from Ha Noi University of Science and Technology said Viet Nam's tea export price was the lowest in the world, about US$1,160 a tonne.

This did not encourage planters to continue, he said, adding that many wanted to quit when they were recently paid only VND7,000 ($34 cents) a kilo.

Tuan said raising the quality of tea products was the first priority. And building a strong brand for Viet Nam's tea was the second.

He suggested that planters develop terraced fields and be shown which seedlings and farming techniques to use. He said this would help ensure productivity and quality.

Vong said that to strengthen co-operation between farmers and tea processors, planters should consider a scheme where they – and their land – would become shareholders of tea processing factories.

He said tea-quality inspection centres be used to ensure that standards complied with overseas demands.

Viet Nam ranks fifth in the world in tea production and export. At present, it has more than 130,000ha of land under plantations. Output has been increasing at the rate of 6 per cent per year.

By 2015, tea export prices are expected to double to about $2,200 a tonne and export turnover $440 million.

During the first seven months of this year, Viet Nam exported 73,000 tonnes with a turnover of $108 million, an increase of more than 4 per cent compared to the same period last year.

 Garment exporters go in search of new contracts

Domestic garment exporters seek more export orders to overcome lagging business, according to local garment firms.

Textile and garment producers struggle from a lack of export contracts due to the ongoing public debt crisis in the EU and resulting market difficulties, said the Viet Nam Textile and Apparel Association (Vitas). Many small-and medium-sized producers have been forced to lower production due to a lack of demand.

However, Pham Phu Cuong, chairman of Nha Be Garment Company's (NBC) management board, said NBC actually managed to grow its business during these past months of fiscal woe. This was because the company saved on production costs, he said, including raw materials and electricity, and was able to implement free-on-board (FOB) contracts.

Under the FOB terms, the Viet Nam factory takes care of basically everything: trims, accessories, fabric, cutting, sewing, packaging, boxing and transportation to the port.

The company established its own division for implementing FOB contracts and hired foreign managers to seek FOB contracts in the US, the UK and France, Cuong said. The FOB contracts create higher turnover than sub-contracts.

NBC plans to develop the FOB Division further to create more turnover for the company in the next few years, Cuong said.

Additionally, NBC got involved in the expanding Russian market by participating in international trade fairs for apparel products in Russia and seeking business partners at the fairs, he said.

Now, the NBC exports 400,000 units of apparel each month to Russia and has more export orders to implement by the end of this year, he said.

As a result, the company gained a year-on-year increase of 20 per cent in export value for the first seven months of this year to US$240 million.

The Garco 10, a large local apparel firm, also saw its export value increase because it retained export contracts with large customers in the world apparel market, including Target, Macy's, Old Navy and DKNY, said Than Duc Viet, Garco 10 managing director. Because the company had a large production scale and diversified products, it was able to weather the grim economic situation.

In the first half of this year, the company reached $80 million in export value, he said.

Youngone Ltd Company in Hoa Xa Industrial Zone, northern Nam Dinh Province implemented export contracts that its parent firm, Youngone Group in South Korea, signed with foreign partners, according to a representative of the company. The company reached $60 million in export value for the first half of this year.

Due to the support from its parent firm, the company had export orders to implement by the end of this year, the representative said.

Dang Phuong Dung, Vitas deputy chairwoman, said the reduction in contracts for producing export products for the EU market would continue through the end of the year and that the situation would remain the same until mid-2013.

Therefore, the local apparel exporters should save themselves by seeking export orders on their own, Dung said.

 Province hopes to make hay from corridor

An international conference on economic and tourism development along the Trans-Asia Highway held in the city of Dong Ha in Quang Tri was indicative of the central province's efforts to exploit the highway.

The chairman of the Quang Tri People's Committee, Nguyen Duc Cuong, underlined this effort, saying the conference was aimed at assessing the advantages conferred by the province's beach-head position on the highway, also known as the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC), and attracting investment.

The 1,450-km highway, which runs through 19 cities and provinces in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Viet Nam, opened in late 2006 following the completion of the second Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge linking Thailand's Mukdahan and Laos' Savannakhet provinces.

The Asian Development Bank estimates the total cost of all the projects and initiatives related to the EWEC at US$2.5 billion. Some $1.2 billion worth of financing has already been identified, mostly related to the ADB's tentative investment pipeline and funds committed by governments.

But the EWEC has not yet been optimally used – while the volume of cargo transported on it has been rising in the last couple of years, the growth rate is lower than expected.

Trade through the Lao Bao (Viet Nam) – Densavan (Laos) border gates rose from nearly $140 million in 2006 to $391.2 million last year, according to Quang Tri trade authorities.

The number of vehicles crossing the border went up from 51,530 in 2010 to 55,000 in 2011, while the number of travellers has been rising sharply every year, going up from 135,000 in 2004 to nearly 596,400 last year.

Le Quang Vinh, director of the Quang Tri Department of Industry and Trade, said commercial and services networks have been developed along the corridor, but mainly in cities and towns in some north-western provinces of Thailand, Savan Town in Laos, and Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, and Da Nang in Viet Nam. But no changes are visible in Laos along the more than 200km from the Densavan Border Gate on the Vietnamese border.

Trade with Myanmar is now in an "exploration" stage due to difficulties in transportation, knowledge of habits and customs, demand for goods, and payment, he said.

"Transport on the EWEC has not been smooth," he admitted.

Since the opening of the Friendship Bridge No 2, the transportation time from Savannakhet to Den Savan has reduced from 10-12 hours to 2.5-3 hours, and from Dong Ha to the Lao Bao border, from four hours to less than two hours.

"Although the Greater Mekong Sub-region's Cross-Border Transport Agreement (CBTA) was signed in 2009, it has not been implemented, affecting the exploitation of the route and transport infrastructure and trade and services infrastructure which has been created, especially transport services, ports and warehouses," Vinh said.

Japanese retailer expands

Japanese supermarket operator Aeon Co Ltd has received a licence for its second shopping centre in Viet Nam in the southern province of Binh Duong.

To be built at a cost of $95 million, the Aeon Shopping Centre – Binh Duong Canary will open in Thuan An town in 2014.

The licence comes four months after Aeon Viet Nam announced it would open its first outlet in HCM City's Tan Phu District.

The $109 million Aeon-Tan Phu Celadon Shopping Centre, construction of which will begin in September, will be completed in mid-2014.

Aeon plans to invest $1.5 billion to open 20 outlets across Viet Nam in the next decade, Motoya Okada, its President and CEO, said at the opening of the company's representative office in HCM City last March.

The 20 outlets, to each employ 2,000-3,000 people, would also help boost exports of Vietnamese goods to Japan, he said.

They "are expected to help attract many other Japanese companies to Viet Nam."

Several Japanese self-service chains such as Family Mart and MiniStop have also come to Viet Nam. Another leading retail group, Takashimaya, is looking at the market and will be accompanied by world-famous fashion brands.

These shopping centres are testimony to a new wave of Japanese investment in Viet Nam since mid-2012.

Real estate has been another option for Japanese investors. In March the Tokyu Corporation broke ground for a $1.2 billion property project covering 71ha in Binh Duong.

Many other Japanese projects were announced in HCM City and other southern provinces in the first half of 2012.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Japanese investment in Viet Nam rose from $17 billion at the end of 2008 to nearly $24 billion three years later.

In the first six months of this year Japan topped the list of foreign investors with investments of $4.15 billion, or 65 per cent of all foreign investment in the period.

 Troubled firms find customers next door

Cambodia, with a population of 15 million, has become an ideal investment destination for many Vietnamese companies as they struggle through recessionary times.

Many companies say that the neighboring market has particularly helped them overcome difficulties because most products there are imported.

Le Quoc Phong, director of the Binh Dien Fertiliser Company, told Viet Nam News that Cambodia has become a market of strategic importance for them. Cambodia has helped his ompany increase its export turnover in current years, he said.

"Last year, the export turnover was US$60 million, an increase of $20 million over our expectation. This year, we think we will reach $70 million. We have already met 60 per cent of the target in the first half of the year," Phong said.

He explained that Binh Dien's success in Cambodia was possible because they found the "correct way" to enter the market.

Intead of focusing on selling more of their products, they also train farmers in how to use it in the most effective way, Phong said.

They also co-operate with Cambodian experts to study local land quality so that they can come up with good products and methods for the farmer.

The Dai Dong Tien Plastic Company has adopted a different strategy.

The company sent its staff to every alley in Phnom Penh to study the market. Initially, they sold their products in the traditional market. Then, they set up stores on main roads and finally, entered the supermarkets.

The company's marketing director Tang Quang Trong was quoted by the Saigon Times as saying Cambodia is still a big market for Vietnamese companies.

While his company has to compete with Thai products, they have managed to hold their own and many of their products have been favoured by the Cambodian consumer, he said.

The success of Binh Dien and Dai Dong Tien have been replicated in different ways by about 400 Vietnamese companies doing business in Cambodia.

While adopting different business strategies, these companies have all agreed to develop a reputation for Vietnamese high-quality products in the Cambodian market.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade says in a statement on its website that trade turnover between the two countries in the first half of the year was $1.6 billion.

The two countries aim to reach a two-way trade turnover of $5 billion in the next five years.

 Abbott acquires 3A Nutrition

The global healthcare company Abbott has acquired 3A Nutrition, its longstanding distribution partner of nutrition products in Viet Nam.

The acquisition, which was approved by government authorities, will expand Abbott's presence in the country.

The two companies have leading positions in both pediatric and adult nutrition-product categories.

Under the agreement, Abbott will have a sales force of 2,100 in 64 provinces. 3A Nutrition will retain its name and will continue to work with the same management team.

According to the Viet Nam Competition Administration Department, the nutrition market in Viet Nam is expected to have strong growth, driven by rising personal incomes and an increased awareness of the importance of nutrition.

 Trade delegation to visit Myanmar

A Vietnamese business delegation will pay a three-day visit to Myanmar later this month to explore investment and co-operation opportunities.

Myanmar is considered as a fertile business land in Asia by foreign investors as it begins to open its doors wider and promote further international integration.

The good politics relations that Viet Nam and Myanmar enjoy is a good foundation for Vietnamese enterprises to build strong economic relations with the neighboring nation through increased investment and trade, experts say.

They say Vietnamese businesses can find lucrative investment opportunities in developing agriculture, industry, forestation, and fisheries.

Myanmar also has high demand for services, consumer goods, agricultural inputs like fertilisers and pesticides, electricity, tourism and infrastructure development.

 VietJetAir launches new route

Budget carrier VietJetAir has added a new route to its itinerary, operating once-a-day flights between HCM City and the coastal city of Nha Trang, one of the country's most popular holiday destinations in central coastal Khanh Hoa Province.

The flights will operate every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

Launched in late 2011, VietJetAir currently flies its Airbus A320 fleet between HCM City, Da Nang, Nha Trang and Ha Noi.

The carrier's HCM City – Hai Phong route will be launched on October 1 this year.-

Surging bad debt leaves financial sector vulnerable

As credit growth has slowed, vulnerabilities in the nation's financial sector have come to the forefront. With the crisis of liquidity now passed, non-performing loans or "bad debt" are now the latest problem bedeviling commercial banks.

Years of hyperactive credit growth, cresting under the economic stimulus package in 2009, have caused the quality of bank assets to decline. With the export and consumer economies all stagnating in 2012, increasing numbers of businesses are facing insolvency. Almost 26,000 businesses failed in the first half of the year.

An increasing non-performing loan ration (NPL) leads to erosion of a bank's profitability, which is largely derived from interest income. This has been reflected in the second-quarter earnings of many banks.

Vietcombank (VCB) has seen credit growth since December 31 of just 2.96 per cent. Meanwhile, the bank's NPL rose from 2 per cent at the end of last year to 3.47 per cent at the end of the second quarter. In the same quarter, profits declined by 10 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier.

At Sacombank (CTG), NPL also jumped from 0.74 per cent at the end of last year to 2.54 per cent at the end of the second quarter of this year. Meanwhile, its profits have dwindled 70 per cent from a year earlier – although this could be partly attributed to the bank making provision for credit losses of VND1.5 trillion in the period, eating up about 66 per cent of pre-provision operating profit. For CTG, loss-making debts have risen this year from VND912 billion (US$43.4 million) to VND2.25 trillion ($107 million), an increase of 147 per cent. The bank's doubtful debts have also jumped nearly nine times from VND200 billion ($9.5 million) at the end of last year to VND1.9 trillion at the end of the second quarter of this year.

Sai Gon-Ha Noi Bank (SHB), Eximbank (EIB) and Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) have also seen doubtful debts surge by 84 per cent, 67 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively. These figures all reflect the impact of the economic downturn, especially the slowdown in the real estate sector, which has contributed significantly to total NPL (nearly 20 per cent).

Prospects for the real estate market remains dim in the medium-term, and the production sector is still facing trouble selling inventories and raising sufficient operating capital to service bank debts. Collateral quality is shrinking, and bad debts are likely to continue to ramp up for the time being.
 
State Bank Governor Nguyen Van Binh recently suggested that actual NPL throughout the banking system is now around 10 per cent, double the official 4.47-per-cent figure
published in May. In the long term, the increase in bad debt may force banks to write-off debts and dispose of low quality assets in order to improve their capital positions.

Ministry to regulate annual stockpiling of rice

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development met in Hanoi on Friday, to discuss a draft policy to regulate periodic stockpiling of rice from farmers in the Mekong Delta.

According to deputy minister Bui Ba Bong, the ministry is rushing to complete the draft policy to annually regulate stockpiling of rice in the Mekong Delta, as instructed by Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai.

The ministry targets to stockpile rice from the winter-spring and summer-autumn rice crops every year; reduce pressure on consumption during peak harvest time, and help increase rice prices for farmers.

According to the draft policy, the Government will stack about one million tons of winter-spring husked rice in February and March each year.

By July, August and September, the ministry will continue to stockpile another 1-1.5 million tons of summer-autumn rice crop.

Mr. Bong said that the ministry wants to periodically purchase rice for stockpiling and not wait until rice prices fall.

Several experts at the meeting proposed that the ministry buy unhusked rice and not husked rice because husked rice is mainly sold by traders not farmers.

Besides, the Government should also have specific regulations on the price of rice and purchasing methods to most benefit farmers.

Most households in the delta region sell their rice to traders before the Government begins stockpiling. As a result, although the rice prices increase, farmers cannot benefit from this.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will gather farmers’ opinions to perfect the draft policy before submitting to the Prime Minister.

Vinacomin owed VND2 trillion in debts    

Companies which mainly buy coal from Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) still owe it a total VND2 trillion (USD95.23 million).
 
Companies which mainly buy coal from Vinacomin still owe it a total VND2 trillion (USD95.23 million). Among those, the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) accounted for half of the total debt.

Vinacomin said this has worsened its current financial difficulties, adding that the group would not continue sell coal to firms which did not pledge to make payments within ten days of receiving coal. For those which made a payment commitment, the deadline is no more than a month and a half.

In July, Vinacomin sold 2.2 million tonnes, including 300,000 tonnes exported, a record low level for many recent years. The group has set a goal to sell a total 39 million this year and will try to ensure it improves and maintains staff working condition and jobs, particularly for pit workers.

Vinacomin has increased coal prices for power companies by 10-11.5%, however, the prices have been raised by VND300 billion (USD14.2 million), compared to the expected figure of VND8.5 trillion (USD404.7 million).

The group said that this year, it would make no profit.

In the second quarter of this year, Vinacomin achieved revenues of VND43.2 trillion (USD205.7 million) and profit of VND500 billion (USD23.8 million).

Vinacomin said that it has cut 10% from staff salaries compared to last year, and more cuts may come.

Firms neglect data security
 
Personal data security is a major challenge to the development of e-commerce in Viet Nam and authorities have yet to pay much attention to the issue.

The statement was made by the deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade's Electronic Commerce and Information Technology Department, Duong Hoang Minh, at a conference in Ha Noi on Thursday.

The issue was one of the seven leading barriers to e-commerce in Viet Nam, Minh said.

A department survey last year showed that only 34 out of 132 surveyed businesses had policies in place to protect personal data, he noted.

Enterprises needed to build an overall policy to proctect personal information, said a number of experts at the conference.

Peter Cullen, head strategist of the Microsoft Group, said a good personal data protection system would ensure control over customer information and prevent customers from receiving unwanted contact from other vendors. Such a system would also protect users from online theft or fraud.

Customer information was an important and proprietary asset of businesses, Cullen said. "If businesses protect that data, they ensure customer trust and build the prestige of their brand name. This, in turn, would also encourage foreign partners to co-operate with these enterprises," he stressed.

Meanwhile, he recommended that businesses be transparent and honest in how they collect and use customer information.

Viet Nam was one of the first 12 nations to subscribe to the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) System, a voluntary, accountability-based system to facilitate the movement of data among APEC economies while protecting privacy.

 Sites may contain malware: BKAV

Internet security company BKAV warned administrators of several major Vietnamese websites yesterday that their sites might be infected with malicious software.

When opened by Chrome and Firefox browsers, a number of leading websites such as vff.org.vn (Viet Nam Football Federation) and other sites ending with gov.vn (government websites) were found to be infected with malware.

"The problem initially happened in 2008 but suddenly came back in recent days. These websites have now been placed on Google's blacklist," said BKAV's director of internet security, Nguyen Minh Duc.

Duc said that for Chrome and Firefox users, the safe browsing function would check if a given site was on the blacklist or not. If it is, the browser will ask the user to leave the site, he added.

"Web administrators should check if their websites really contain malware, and if so, should clean it from the server," he said.

He said after removing any hidden malware, administrators can go to google.com/webmaster/tools to remove the sites from the blacklist.

Meanwhile, Internet users should contact web administrators if they got a warning from Google about a particular site, Duc added.

Ha Noi-based BKAV warned the public earlier this month that a critical flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) across supported versions of Windows affects about 32 per cent of the Vietnamese Government web servers.

 Student wins first prize in ‘Word' contest

Tran Dinh Vi from the HCM City Banking University won first prize in the Microsoft Office Word 2003 category at the Microsoft Office World Champion 2012 (MOWC 2012) on Wednesday in Las Vegas.

The contest, which attracted 285,000 students from 53 countries worldwide, specialised in competitions using Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

This is the third time Vi has taken part in the MOWC, having missed out in 2010 and 2011 in the final round.

"It is wonderful for me to win this award on my third attempt. My efforts have finally paid off," Vi said.

According to Ray Kelly, CEO of Certiport, the organiser of the contest, MOWC had been gaining incredible momentum over the years, and the student competitors were incredibly passionate about preparing for the exams and representing their countries.

"The competition has become a technology Olympics as students demonstrate their tremendous skills and compete against the best of the best," he said.

"Certification is a valuable tool for students – it helps them to be college and career ready. It also proves that they have desirable skills and gives them confidence in using these applications more fully than most other users in the world," Kelly added.

Certiport, the world's leading provider of computer literacy skills training, has a network of 10,000 authorised testing centres worldwide.

More mobile users opt for smartphones

As many as 42 per cent of Vietnamese phone users want to make the switch to smartphones in the next six months, according to a recent Nielsen survey.

According to the survey, which was conducted in over 39 countries in Asia and the Pacific, 70 per cent of Vietnamese consumers use ordinary mobile phones. But 42 per cent of them want to exchange these devices for smartphones in the next six months.

Most Vietnamese people select their phones by asking friends, families and colleagues for advice, according to the study. Many individuals (39 per cent) say they are attracted by phones displayed in shops, and a smaller number (6 per cent) seek out information about phones on leaflets.