Copyright 2003 Financial Times Information
All rights reserved
Global News Wire - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
Copyright 2003 The Saigon Times Daily
The Saigon Times Daily

January 27, 2003

LENGTH: 501 words
HEADLINE: TRANS-ASIA HIGHWAY OPENED TO THE TRAFFIC
BYLINE: Yen Dung
BODY:
(SGT-HCMC) The Vietnam section of the Trans-Asia Highway, stretching
80km from HCMC's Thu Duc District to Moc Bai Border Gate in Tay Ninh
Province near Cambodia, was opened to the traffic on Saturday.
The highway is expected to ease the increasing heavy traffic from the
city to Tay Ninh and then to Cambodia during the Lunar New Year, which
falls on February 1 this year, said Do Ngoc Dung, deputy general
director of the My Thuan Project Management Unit, the project owner.
Asphalting has been completed but the highway will be consolidated
with a new asphalt layer after the <
>Tet holidays, Dung said. The highway project, beginning in September
1999, has been considered to be of high importance towards the
development of communications and trade between Vietnam and Cambodia
and other ASEAN nations.
Three among the seven supplementary construction items were also
completed on the day of the road opening, including intersections and
crossovers at Song Than Station and Binh Phuoc Crossroad in Thu Duc
District as well as at Cu Chi Roundabout in Cu Chi District.
"The supplementary works have been invested with US $ 30 million
sourced from the left-over capital after the project bidding," Dung
said. The Government has okayed the additional constructions upon the
approval of the lender Asian Development Bank, he said.
Underway now are constructions of intersections and crossovers at Moc
Bai in Tay Ninh and at Quang Trung and Tham Luong crossroads in
District 12 and Linh Xuan in Thu Duc. The remaining constructions are
scheduled for completion late this year, according to the project
owner.
The bank has injected soft loans of US $ 100 million into the project
with total capitalization of US $ 144.6 million. The Vietnamese
Government has covered the counter capital used for site clearance.
BB Thinner coffee supply pushes prices up
BB By Hong Van
QQ (SGT-HCMC) Coffee prices in Vietnam's Central Highlands have been
firmer to VND10,900 per kilo of bean from VND10,000 late last month on
smaller supply, local exporters said.
Nguyen Van Thinh, deputy director of the Daklak-based coffee company
Tay Nguyen, said despite of the price increases, local exporters
managed to buy just a small volume because farmers do not want to sell
their stock, while the main harvest of the 2002/03 crop has ended.
Central Highlands coffee exporters are quoting grade-two robusta R2 at
US $ 760 per ton on FOB terms at HCMC's Saigon Port.
Do Ha Nam, deputy director of the Trade Ministry-administered
export-import company Intimex, said coffee production in the Central
Highlands has shrunk because farmers are not as interested in the tree
as before, and droughts have hit production.
"Daklak and Lam Dong provinces, the two biggest coffee suppliers
there, will likely decrease their output by between one-third and a
half," he said. His company, which is one of the four largest coffee
exporters of Vietnam, shipped 86,000 tons of coffee abroad last year.
JOURNAL-CODE: FSGT
Vietnam News List - vnnews-l
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/vnnews-list.html
List owner: Stephen R Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>