The implementation of the second phase in the mammoth Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel expansion project is hanging in the balance after the Ministry of Finance disagreed with most of the incentive proposals necessary to the project’s resumption.

Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, who took office as the new Chair of the National Assembly, has admitted the failure of the plan on developing Vietnam into an industrialized country which marches towards modernization.

 The Department for Economic Zones Management reported that during Q1, the country opened 305 industrial parks covering over 84,000 hectares and 16 economic zones covering 814,792 hectares of water and land.

Bui Duc Thu, a member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Financial and Budgetary Affairs, said that in 2016, Vietnam would try to keep the inflation rate under 5 percent and reach a GDP growth rate of 6.7 percent.

 VietNamNet Bridge - Rocket Internet has sold its business rights of Zalora Vietnam and Zalora Thailand to Thailand’s Central Group for $20 million or $10 million each, Techcrunch has reported.

 Vietnamese players had a good start at the Dong Feng Citroen Badminton Asia Championships which began yesterday in Wuhan, China.

 Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc today chaired the new government’s first national meeting to tackle the heated food safety issue.

VietNamNet Bridge - E-United has unexpectedly expressed its willingness to come back to Vietnam to develop the Guang Lian steel project which it once gave up because of financial problems. 

 The number of traffic accidents in the first four months of 2016 fell by 12.6 percent year on year to about 6,620 accidents, according to the National Traffic Safety Committee.

 China has increased the volume of water being released from Jinghong hydropower plant to the lower Mekong River.

 The Ministry of Health has warned that insecticide-resistant mosquitoes have appeared in the country and are liable to spread.

 The Department of Education and Training in HCM City has asked city districts to begin using the Vietnam Escuela Nueva (VNEN) methodology at more local schools in the 2016-2017 academic year.

The Prime Minister has approved a technical assistance project on “mainstreaming climate change mitigation into national infrastructure in the areas of energy and transport,” under the framework of the Clean Technology Fund. 

 A survey publicised on April 26 by the Ministry of Home Affairs found that people in 10 selected Vietnamese provinces and cities are generally satisfied with local public administrative services.

 Deputy head of the Government Committee for Religious Affairs Bui Thanh Ha met with Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Muhammad Mukhtar Jumu’ah in Cairo on April 26 to boost cooperation in the field in charge.

 Vietnam values Russia’s contributions to peace and stability in the Asia–Pacific region, Minister of National Defence Ngo Xuan Lich said on April 26.

 National singles ace Nguyen Tien Minh and nine other team members are representing Vietnam in the 2016 Badminton Asia Championships, taking place in Wuhan, China from April 26 to May 1. 

The ASEAN countries need to have a unanimous voice on the East Sea security and navigation safety issue, Vietnamese Defence Minister Ngo Xuan Lich has said at a meeting with his Thai counterpart Prawit Wongsuwan in Moscow, Russia.

Formosa Ha Tinh yesterday apologised for the recent inflammatory remarks by its PR guru Chou Chun Fan that suggested local people couldn’t expect to maintain their local environment if they wanted to have a modern steel industry.

On April 25, Le Xuan Long, marketing director of Lazada Vietnam, confessed that the company had sold a refurbished Iphone 5 instead of a new unit to a customer in Hanoi, according to newswire ICTnews.vn.