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Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine, was allowed to leave prison to be treated for a back condition. The opposition leader is serving a seven-year sentence for abusing her office while negotiating a natural-gas supply contract with Russia in 2009. The Ukrainian government appeared to be bowing to pressure from "pean Union leaders, who see Ms Tymoshenko's conviction as politically motivated. Pal Schmitt resigned as president of Hungary, after Budapest's Semmelweis University stripped him of his doctorate because of plagiarism. His resignation means that Viktor Orban, the prime minister, has lost a loyal ally who rubber-stamped all of the government's new, and contentious, laws. Mali's neighbours imposed a trade embargo in protest at a recent army coup. The coup's leaders responded with promises to restore the country's democratic constitution. Tuareg rebels meanwhile advanced from the north, seizing the city of Timbuktu. Syria agreed to an April 10th deadline to start implementing a UN-Arab League peace plan, but it still insists it will not pull troops out of cities until opposition forces disarm. Finance ministers in the euro zone agreed to raise the combined ceiling of the currency block's temporary and permanent bail-out facilities to 700 billion ($930 billion). Some argue the rescue pot should be bigger still. Sino-Forest filed for bankruptcy protection. The company was one of China's biggest wood producers until it was accused last year of fraud by Muddy Waters, a short-seller that has made a name for itself by investigating the accounts of Chinese companies. It is now being sued by Sino-Forest for defamation. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, criticised China's big banks for acting like a "monopoly" and said private capital should be allowed "to flow into the finance sector". Mr Wen's comments could hasten reforms in the financial sector. On the same day that he spoke China's securities regulator almost tripled the amount of money that foreign funds can invest in capital markets, to $80 billion. The price of carbon permits in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme plummeted to another record low, after data suggested that Europe had produced a smaller amount of polluting emissions last year than had been thought. The underlying reason why carbon prices have tanked is that the market is oversupplied with permits. Apple supported the recommendations of a report by the Fair Labour Association into conditions at the factories in China that assemble its products. Foxconn, which runs the factories, reportedly said it would try to comply with FLA standards on working hours by July 2013.
Mr. Dung recently removed the chief of Vietnam's state electricity generator after the company diversified into the mobile phone business instead of focusing on building up the country's sorely depleted generation capacity. Successful state firms such as Vietnam Oil & Gas, or PetroVietnam, too, have pulled out of high-profile real-estate ventures as the government recalibrates the state-owned enterprises' role in Vietnam's economy. In his comments to The Wall Street Journal, Vietnam's premier said his government will now focus on determining the scope and scale of the country's state sector. "We will define the role and functions of the state and state-owned enterprises in a socialist-oriented market economy," Mr. Dung said, adding that the government will "accelerate equitization to diversify the ownership of state-owned businesses." Vietnam's leader said his goal is to "retain only a number of key state-owned enterprises in certain industries." There are signs now that Vietnam is regaining confidence as inflation recedes. The country's central bank recently eased back on interest rates in order to stimulate more growth, while investors have been cautiously returning to Vietnam's equity markets. Over the weekend, Vietnam and the European Union also agreed to begin talks on developing a free-trade agreement. Mr. Dung told The Wall Street Journal that closer economic integration within Southeast Asia will also help spur on Vietnam's economy. He predicted that plans to drop tariffs in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2015 will encourage a fresh surge of foreign direct investment into the region, and will make it easier for Asean-based nations to invest more heavily in each other's economiessomething which Mr. Dung said is "particularly significant" for the region's less-developed economies.
Vietnamese P.M. Nguyen Tan Dung (center) poses for a photo with Korea University president Kim Byoung-chul (left), and Korea University Graduate School dean Park Jung-ho after receiving an honorary doctorate from the university on 28 March 2012. The Korea Herald
mouthpiece. The Government Inspectorate alleged that PetroVietnam, Song Da and other stateowned companies had mismanaged assets and made bad investment decisions. It said PetroVietnam, whose outspoken chairman Dinh La Thang was promoted to transport minister last year, was responsible for 18.2tn dong of losses to the state budget, according to the stateowned Tuoi Tre newspaper. Foreign and local investors say wasteful spending and corruption at Vietnams favoured state-owned companies has destabilised the economy and damaged the countrys reputation. The Communist government has vowed to clean up the state sector while ensuring that it retains a leading role in the economy, as part of its struggle to maintain economic legitimacy. Last week, the well-connected former chairman of Vinashin, a state-owned shipbuilder, was jailed for 20 years on charges of economic mismanagement after bringing the company, which had amassed more than $4bn in debt, to the brink of collapse. The scandal was a partial trigger for all three main global credit rating agencies to downgrade Vietnams sovereign debt rating in 2010. Despite the large scale of the losses unveiled on Thursday, analysts said it was too early to know if this was the start of a concerted crackdown on errant state companies or merely more rhetoric. Its not clear whether there will be any serious fallout from these allegations, one foreign economic researcher based in Ho Chi Minh City said. Typically, the government inspectorate identifies a token number of state-owned companies, organisations and ministries at which to conduct an audit, they come up with all sorts of irregularities, theres some noise for a day or two and then it goes away. Nguyen Quang A, an independent economist and former government adviser, said he was not surprised by the inspectorates findings as it was in the nature of state-owned enterprises to use money for the wrong purposes. But he said this did not yet amount to a serious effort to restructure state-owned companies because if they want to do that, they must be much stronger, they have to change the Communist partys direction, and thats not easy. PetroVietnam declined to comment, but said it would hold a press conference next week from which foreign news organisations would be excluded. Song Da was not immediately available to comment.
A sinking ship
Asia Times, 05 Apr. 2012 Crony capitalism went on trial in Vietnam last week. However, the proceedings did little to quell public skepticism or address the underlying causes of a spectacular economic and political failure. Assigning responsibility for the near collapse of Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group Vinashin), the state-owned entity that effectively went bankrupt in 2010 with over US$4.4 billion in debts, a Vietnamese court on March 30 sentenced former chief executive officer Pham Thanh Binh and eight other senior company officials to upwards of 20 years in prison. As Vietnamese bloggers were quick to point out, Binh and his co-defendants were charged with misappropriating $43 million in funds - which represented less than 1% of the total debt racked
up by Vinashin. While the court ruled that the defendants caused "serious economic consequences" and "reduced the people's trust in the government"' throwing away $43 million as detailed in the indictment was hardly the main explanation for Vinashin's meltdown. The root problem can be traced back to 2006 when Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung reorganized many of the country's state-owned enterprises and placed the largest corporate groups under the direct control of the prime minister's office. Dung's ambitious plan was to pursue a corporatist development strategy along the lines of South Korea's chaebols while building a personal power base. Dung appointed close allies to run Vinashin and the other business groups. According to critics, the prime minister's office succeeded in consolidating control but did not exercise real oversight. Thanks to preferential credit policies, Vinashin got cheap domestic loans from state-owned banks and lots of dollars from international lenders which it used to expand into unrelated businesses such as real estate, motorcycle manufacturing and tourism. Benefiting from a government guarantee, even the proceeds from Vietnam's inaugural dollar bond of $750 million and a high-profile syndicated loan arranged by Credit Suisse worth $600 million were funneled to Vinashin. Vinashin's shoddy management and unsustainable expansion eventually led to a debt crisis with wider economic implications for the country. Vietnam's sovereign credit rating, for example, was downgraded to four notches below investment grade by international credit agencies partly because of the failing shipbuilding company's potential impact on government finances. Lenders naturally want to know whether a sovereign borrower can service its debts. But in the case of Vietnam, how much debt the Hanoi government is on the hook for is a big question mark. According to official statistics, the outstanding amount of government debt has been expanding quickly and is currently at 60% of gross domestic product (GDP). However, this figure does not account for borrowings by state-owned enterprises. If the debt of these entities are included on the central government's balance sheet, Vietnam's debt position is markedly worse. Just how much worse is anyone's guess. Besides Vinashin, Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) and Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) are among several big state-owned companies carrying high debt loads and seen as potential trouble spots, especially in a market downturn. The circumstances that catalyzed the Vinashin collapse - governmentdirected lending, corruption and a distorted playing field - are still rampant in Vietnam. Unfortunately, the trial last week only focused on individual criminality instead of systemic malfeasance. One seemingly logical solution would be to privatize state-owned firms in Vietnam to bring an end to government-run chaebols. In a press interview on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit this week Dung conveyed this very point to reassure foreign investors. Specifically, he pledged to "accelerate equitization to diversify the ownership of state-owned businesses". However, privatization without transparency and accountability is no panacea, according to the candid assessment of a World Bank senior economist with
experience on Vietnam. Instead, "equitization" (communist Vietnam's euphemism for privatization) could open the door to the looting of public assets. This economist, speaking off the record, compared the possible outcome in Vietnam to that of Russia in the 1990s when much of the state sector passed into the hands of a coterie of politically-connected individuals. Indeed, the bosses of many of Vietnam's largest investment firms today are the friends and family of the prime minister. His daughter, Nguyen Thanh Phuong, is the founder and chairwoman of VietCapital Asset Management. The prime minister's son-in-law, Henry Nguyen, is the head of IDG Ventures Vietnam, another large private equity fund. Given the level of corruption in Vietnam, it is not unreasonable to believe that politically favored investors would have significant advantages in any equitization deal. As demonstrated by the Vinashin saga, there are currently no checks and balances. A developing country surely requires talented and successful businesspeople, including those who are related to political leaders. What Vietnam can do without are Russian-style oligarchs or the crony capitalism that contributed to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Ultimately, what Vietnam sorely needs is equal doses of fundamental economic and political reforms. Only by leveling the economic playing field, ensuring transparency through a free media, and generating democratic reforms and accountability, can there be no more Vinashins.
On Wednesday, the Philippines and Vietnam urged Cambodia, Asean's chair this year, to make it clear that Asean alone would craft its version of the proposed code of conduct before bringing China into process. In its closing statement, Cambodia didn't mention the South China Sea controversy. Speaking to reporters, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, a strong ally of Beijing and a major recipient of Chinese aid, dismissed speculation that his country was being pressured by China to block the discussions. "I've never heard of any suggestion from China's leaders that Cambodia should do this or do that," Mr. Hun Sen told reporters. China denies allegations that it has sabotaged oil exploration in Vietnamese or Philippine waters. But Beijing has publicly warned the Philippines and Vietnam to seek its permission before drilling for oil and natural gas. ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said a failure by Asian nations to resolve their differences over how to approach the South China Sea problems could undermine how investors perceive the stability of the region. "They have the right to be concerned," Mr. Surin said in an interview. "We're a bright spot in the world. If anything derails our growth, it would have important implications." In the meantime, Mr. Surin said, there will be informal discussions with China over the code, which is envisioned as a legally binding document to guide the resolution of territorial disputes. The ASEAN nations had few difficulties speaking with a common voice over member-nation Myanmar, which has enacted a series of changes that appear to have brought a greater degree of democracy to the formerly military-run state. Delegates were gushing in their praise for Myanmar President Thein Sein, after a series of by-elections Sunday that were marked by a strong turnout for pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. Cambodia's Mr. Hun Sen said ASEAN would first urge the European Union to drop stiff political and economic sanctions against the former military state, which is also known as Burma, "We called for the lifting of all sanctions on Myanmar immediately in order to contribute positively to the democratic process and economic development in that country," the Asean leaders said in a statement. The elections in Myanmar were for 45 vacant seats in the country's 664-seat parliament, but assumed huge significance because Ms. Suu Kyi was among the winning candidates after two decades as a political prisoner.
Experts say Vietnam's surging demand is threatening to wipe out the world's remaining rhinoceros populations, which recovered from the brink of extinction after the 1970s thanks to conservation campaigns. Illegal killings in Africa hit the highest recorded level in 2011 and are expected to worsen this year. This week South Africa called for renewed cooperation with Vietnam after a "shocking number" of rhinos have already been reported dead this year. China has long valued rhino horn for its purported though unproven medicinal properties, but U.S. officials and international wildlife experts now say Vietnam's recent intense craving, blamed partly on a widespread rumor that rhino horn cures cancer, is putting unprecedented pressure on the world's estimated 28,000 remaining animals, mainly in South Africa. "It's a very dire situation," U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said by telephone. "We have very little cushion for these populations in the wild." Although data on the global rhino horn trade is scarce, poaching in Africa has soared in the past two years, with American officials saying China and Vietnam are driving the trade that has no "significant" end market in the United States. Wildlife advocates say that over the last decade, rhino horn has become a musthave luxury item for some Vietnamese nouveau riche, alongside Gucci bags and expensive Maybach cars. Between 2006 and 2008, three diplomats at the Vietnamese Embassy in Pretoria were linked to embarrassing rhino trafficking scandals including one caught on tape. In February, U.S. agents busted an alleged interstate rhino horn trafficking syndicate with Vietnamese-American ringleaders. According to a court affidavit obtained by The Associated Press, Felix Kha, one of the alleged traffickers arrested in the recent U.S. bust, allegedly traveled to China 12 times between 2004 and 2011 and to Vietnam five times last year. "There are still horns going into China but Vietnam is driving the increase in poaching for horns," said Chris R. Shepherd, deputy regional director for Southeast Asia at the wildlife advocacy group TRAFFIC. "Vietnamese authorities really need to step up their efforts to find out who is behind horn trafficking ... and put them out of business." The rhino horn craze offers bigger payoffs than other exotic wildlife products such as bear bile or tiger bone paste. American officials say the crushed powder fetches up to $55,000 per kilogram in Asia ($25,000 per pound) a price that can top the U.S. street value of cocaine, making the hoof-like substance literally as valuable as gold. The drive is so great, thieves are now pinching rhino horns from European museums and taxidermy shops, sometimes smashing them off with sledgehammers before fleeing. According to Europol, the European law enforcement agency, 72 rhino horns were stolen from 15 European countries in 2011, the first year such data was recorded. Poachers in South Africa are also using chain saws to rip rhinos' horns off, mutilating the hulky animals while they're still alive and leaving oozing bloody cavities in the heads of those lucky enough to survive. Sometimes, they simply shoot the beasts dead, even though the horns can grow back within two years without harming the animal if carefully cut. Officials and nonprofits in South Africa are preemptively cutting some rhinos' horns in an attempt to save them, but some poachers are killing anyway just for the nubs.
Vietnam wiped out its own last known Javan rhinoceros in 2010, despite the country's earlier efforts to protect it. The last of the population was found dead in a national park, shot through the leg with its horn hacked off. Tran Dang Trung, who manages a zoo outside Hanoi that imported four white rhinos from South Africa, said he worries for the animals' safety even though the zoo has 24-hour security. "If thieves wanted to kill the animals and steal their valuable parts, they could," Trung said recently outside the rhinos' basketball court-sized outdoor pen. Laws in Vietnam surrounding the business of importing horns are murky and crackdowns are rare despite government pledges to root out traffickers. Officially, no more than 60 horns are legally imported into Vietnam as trophies bagged from South African game farms each year, but international wildlife experts have estimated the actual number of trophy horns taken by Vietnamese nationals from South Africa each year may exceed 100. Earlier this week, the South African government said it was working with the Vietnamese to stop the potential abuse of hunting permits. Hanoi has also been asked to conduct inspections to make sure rhino trophies imported from South Africa still remain in the hunters' possession. It's impossible to track how other rhino horns are entering Vietnam, wildlife advocates say, but they point to local media reports suggesting Vietnamese diplomats are implicated in the international trade that's been largely banned since 1976. In 2006, a diplomat at Vietnam's South African Embassy was arrested for trafficking rhino horn, while another was filmed two years later trading the substance outside the mission's gates. A third diplomat was also questioned that same year after 18 kilograms (40 pounds) of rhino horn was found in his car outside a casino. In a statement, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said those incidents reflected badly upon Vietnam's image, and that the diplomats all faced disciplinary measures. Meanwhile, illegal rhino killings in South Africa are skyrocketing from 122 in 2009 to 333 in 2010 and a record 448 in 2011. The country reported last week that 150 rhinos had already been poached this year, nearly 60 percent taken from Kruger National Park. In Hanoi, Vietnamese buy rhino horn on the streets of the city's bustling old quarter, where a traditional medicine dealer recently told the AP that the average prescription costs 200,000 dong ($10). Hanoi doctors report that some of their clients take the powder as a supplement to western medicines, believing it cures fever and other common ailments. Others use it as a last-ditch effort against cancer. Nguyen Huu Truong, a doctor at Hanoi's Center for Allergy Clinical Immunology, said a handful of patients visit him each year complaining of rashes he links to rhino horn consumption. "Many Vietnamese believe that anything expensive is good, but if you're going to spend a lot of money on rhino horn, you might as well bite your nails," he said. Rhino horns are composed of keratin, a protein found in human hair and fingernails. Giang, the young Vietnamese woman who regularly uses rhino horn to prevent hangovers, says she's unfazed by doctors' assessments of the substance's efficacy and doesn't care to know how her father acquired the horn.
Experts say some rhino horns passing through Vietnam are fakes, and the AP couldn't verify the authenticity of Giang's horn, which she grinds on a plate with a rough finish made specifically for the task. She ingests the liquefied form when she has allergic reactions or after tippling on too much top-shelf liquor. Because Giang only takes rhino horn shots once or twice every three months, she estimates her horn will last another 10 to 15 years. But once her stash is depleted, there may not be any rhinos left on earth to satisfy her craving.
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