While acknowledging the Government’s efforts in tax reforms, many enterprises say cumbersome tax and customs procedures are blunting the country’s advantage in low-price labour. 

 Officials from Hanoi Fatherland Front, led by its President Vu Hong Khanh, have studied experience in rallying the mass and raising fund in Switzerland.

 Delegates at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) 2017 were impressed by Vietnam’s preparations for the event, hailing Hanoi as a hospitable city on the sidelines of SOM-2 and related meetings from May 9-21. 

 Party, State and Front leaders paid tribute to President Ho Chi Minh at his mausoleum in Hanoi on May 18 on the occasion of the late leader’s 127th birth anniversary (May 19, 1890).

PEGA, the owner of HKBike electric bicycle brand, announced that 35 percent of bicycle components are made in Vietnam by 30 Vietnamese companies, drawing public attention to the development of support industries.

VietNamNet Bridge - The three subjects that students find boring are English, literature and history, according to Do Tan Ngoc, an experienced educator.

VietNamNet Bridge - If Vietnam doesn’t have a plan to exploit sand in an effective and reasonable way, it will have to import sand in the future, experts have said.

VietNamNet Bridge - Some customer service departments no longer put staff on duty at night because the job now can be undertaken by Hana, a virtual consultancy officer created by Mideas, a startup.

Dang Viet Dung, managing director of Uber Vietnam, thinks Vietnam may not catch up with the revolution in the short term, while it remains a question in the medium term. 

Here are the opinions of business leaders on what the fourth industrial revolution has in store for Vietnam.

 The number of traffic accidents related to trucks has been on the rise. Lax management over road freight has been partially blamed for the problem.

 The Ministry of Transport has shortened the tolling duration of 13 build-operate-transfer (BOT) road projects by a combined 92 years and three months.

 Vietnam Bear Sanctuary in Tam Dao National Park, Vinh Phuc, the first of its kind in the country, is opening for visitors to raise public awareness of protecting the endangered species.

As of December 31, 2016, Vietnam had a total forest area of nearly 14.378 million hectares, including over 10.242 million hectares of natural forest and more than 4.135 million hectares of planted area.

 An official of the Ministry of Finance has detailed four financial cooperation initiatives proposed by Vietnam in the APEC Year 2017, ahead of the Senior Finance Officials’ Meeting slated for May 18-19 in Ninh Binh province.

 Vietnam-Myanmar traditional friendship and cooperative relations

 The impressive growth of Viet Nam’s tourism sector has given a boost to tourism and resort property market, according to experts.

 Viet Nam has proposed an initiative on building an e-commerce facilitation framework within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), as it is an important content in the 2017 APEC’s agenda.

 Japan has become the largest market for Vietnamese shrimps, accounting for 21.9 per cent of the country’s shrimp export value in the first quarter of 2017.

 The Viet Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank) has been made the exclusive financial institution to carry out settlements for derivatives trading transactions.