The month-long festivities will also celebrate the fifth anniversary of Hue royal music’s (Nha Nhac)’s recognition as a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage.
A wave of publicity activities are to be launched with contests and quizzes, talks and seminars, special programmes and columns on the mass media and leafleting.

Highlights include a seminar themed “Challenges and opportunities for Hue heritage in the world integration process” and a Hue Culture Week in Hanoi from Nov. 21-25.

The Hue Culture Week features an exhibition of photos of well-known female photographer and Hue native Dao Hoa Nu, calligraphy work, and a collection of royal objects from the Hue Royal Citadel Antiques Museum .

In addition, fine arts and handicraft products, gastronomy, and folk games and music popular in the ancient royal capital city will also be introduced to visitors.

The preservation of “Nha Nhac” has received a boost with a UNESCO-funded project which collects and hands over the royal music skills to young generations. Some 20 young “Nha Nhac” musicians have been trained through the project.-Enditem

Banks’ capital profuse, but they still hold capital back

VietNamNet Bridge – Bank’s usable capital is now in excess, but banks still try to hold capital back instead of pushing up the disbursement.

Businesses cannot reach for capital

The latest report by the State Bank of Vietnam shows that banks now have VND 50 trillion in excessive capital. However, this does not mean that businesses will be able to access the bank loans.

Hoang Viet Trung, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Branch of the State Bank of Vietnam, acknowledged that businesses are still facing difficulties in accessing bank loans.

According to Trung, the local banks had mobilized VND 400 trillion by the end of October, while the total outstanding loans had reached only VND 250 trillion.

The main reason behind the low outstanding loans, according to Trung, is that banks have been trying to tighten the loaning conditions for fear of bad debts.

Le Xuan Nghia, Director of the Banking Development Strategy Department under the State Bank of Vietnam said: “Banks are now looking at businesses with doubtful eyes, therefore, they hesitate to ‘open their purse strings’ to lend to businesses.”

However, experts have urged banks to push up loaning to rescue a lot of businesses in danger of bankruptcy because of no capital. Dr. Cao Cu Boi from the Hanoi National Economics University, said that banks cannot slash lending interest rates sharply right now, but they need to become ‘flexible and light-handed’ in controlling credit quality.

“Businesses are thirsty for capital, while the credit growth rate is limited at 30% over the previous year,” Boi said.

Former Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen said that he believes the highest credit growth rate would be 25%, and that there is no need to set up the limit of 30% credit growth rate for this year.

Why?

Nghia said that the State Bank of Vietnam has pumped more capital to commercial banks through monetary policies, but commercial banks have not provided capital to businesses. What have they done with the money? They have injected it in to bonds.

Sources said that the capital flow from commercial banks to bonds has increased sharply. Banks find it safer to invest in bonds than lending to businesses. This is because the bond yield of 16-16.8% proves to be relatively attractive for banks.

In the first six months of the year, banks once faced serious difficulties in capital sources and liquidity. The big difficulties have made banks accustomed to being very cautious with lending. That explains why banks still hesitate to push up lending, though the credit growth rate has reached 19% only (the ceiling level is 30% for this year).

A banker said that banks have every reason to remain cautious with their disbursement plans, as the difficulties of the national economy have been affecting their business and payment capabilities.
Ninh Thuan leads the country in FDI attraction
Hanoi (VNA) – Southern central Ninh Thuan province is leading the country in terms of FDI inflow as it attracted 16.8 percent, or 9.79 billion USD, of the total foreign investment capital into the country in the first ten months of 2008.

The figure does not include the capital of seven oil and gas exploration projects, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI).

Following Ninh Thuan are southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau province with 9.3 billion USD and Ho Chi Minh City with 8 billion USD.

Foreign investors poured a total of 59.3 billion USD into new projects in the country over the past 10 months.
The country has also signed with international donors agreements on Official Development Assistance (ODA) provision worth more than 3.1 billion USD, including 2.9 billion USD in loans and 206 million USD in grants.
The MPI reported that close to 1.6 billion USD in ODA capital had been disbursed in the January-October period of this year.-Enditem