Japanese trading house Sojitz has purchased Vietnam's Saigon Paper for about 10 billion JPY (91.2 million USD), inking a deal to tap the fast-growing demand for cardboard and tissue paper in the Southeast Asian country.

Vietnam has launched more than 1 million voluntary carbon credits from household biogas plants to the international market as part of the Biogas Programme for the Animal Husbandry Sector in 2016-2020. 

 Achim Steiner, Administrator of UNDP and Vice Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group, began a two-day visit to Vietnam on June 26.

 The first instance court hearing of Nguyen Thi Lam, former officer of Eximbank’s branch in Nghe An province who appropriated VND50 billion ($2.2 million) from customers, and 15 other defendants starts today after two postponements.

Mobile number portability (MNP) will create a new battlefield for domestic mobile operators from as early as 2019, putting even more emphasis on service quality and network stability. 

 Total foreign direct investment capital poured into new and exsting projects and used to contribute capital and buy shares in domestic companies reached $9.9 billion in Jan-May, down 18.3 per cent year on year.

 Balance of supplies may be a problem for Mobile World after seizing Tran Anh Digital World JSC (code: TAG), causing losses to the latter and killing interest in its stocks.

The Vinh Phuc People’s Committee submitted the fourth document asking the prime minister to refuse Hong Kong-backed TAL Group’s $350 million textile and garment dyeing project.   

 Hanoi Department of Planning and Investment has explained a decision to give investors 700 hectares of land in different locations in Hanoi in exchange for the construction of five roads with a build-transfer contract.

 At least 17 people have been killed, seven others injured and 11 remained missing in flash floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains between June 23 and 25 in some northern mountainous provinces.

 Vietnamese exports have been subject to an increasing number of protectionist measures overseas, and most of the trade-defense lawsuits have been filed against Vietnamese iron and steel exports, officials said.

The central Phu Yen Province police have launched legal proceedings against a former treasurer of Phu Yen Forest Protection Department for alleged embezzlement.

 Mavin Group has become the first business in Vietnam to officially export fresh pork to a foreign market when the first batch was shipped to Myanmar, a success of not only the company but also the country’s animal farming sector.

Heavy downpours and flooding over recent days have caused serious human and property damage in the mountainous provinces in the north, where Ha Giang and Lai Chau are suffering the most.

 Statistics show that Vietnamese consumers use only about 1.9GB of cellular data on average each month, much lower than the regional countries of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore where the amounts come in between 4.7GB and 8.5GB.

Capital contribution and share purchases by foreign investors via mergers and acquisitions in HCMC amounted to some US$2.5 billion during the year up to late May.

Healthy domestic banks should focus on improving the transparency in their audited financial statements to attract foreign investors as some banks have recently succeeded with the strategy, experts suggested.

 The capitalisation of the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) has rocketed over 100 times to reach VND656.4 trillion (US$28.8 billion) after nine years of operation.

 Foreign invested enterprises play an important role in attracting and transferring technology, but the efficiency of the transfer work through FDI channels has not met expectations.

 Although the Government has ordered the removal and revision of unreasonable rules on food fortification with micronutrients, the Ministry of Health has been slow to act.