Weekly News Bulletin - No. 04, October 2022

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade showed that cases of consumer rights violations increased rapidly in both quantity and severity, with about 1,500 cases per year in the 2016-2020 period. This is also the boom period of e-commerce.

Meanwhile, current legal policies, especially the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights, which was promulgated 12 years ago, lack provisions suitable for business models with new elements in terms of digital transformation. Many new violations of consumer rights have also not been covered in the law. In order to perfect the legal framework to protect the interests of consumers, especially in the e-commerce environment and in cyberspace, the Government proposed and was approved by the National Assembly to put the amended draft of the Law on Protection of Consumer Rights into the programme on building laws and ordinances this year. Mr Trinh Anh Tuan, VCCA deputy director, emphasised that protecting consumers' interests in cyberspace was still a new issue for Vietnam so it must be done regularly and continuously.

Việt Nam has selected six priority industries for support development, including textiles and garment, footwear, electronics, automobiles, mechanics and high technology. The country needs to promote bridges between domestic and FDI enterprises to improve its position in the global value chain.

The Multilateral Stakeholder Forum (MSF) 2022, themed "Improving Việt Nam's position in the global value chain: Multilateral cooperation in capacity building and traceability responsibility", was held in Haioi on Wednesday. The Ministry of Industry and Trade jointly organised the event with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour and Samsung Vietnam. Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai reaffirmed the importances of industrialisation and modernisation. Through 35 years of persistently implementing this goal, Việt Nam's industry has achieved certain achievements. As a result, the scale of Việt Nam's economy in 2021 reached about US$370 billion, making it the 4th largest economy in Southeast Asia; per capita income of more than $3,700; trade scale reached $670 billion, belonging to the group of 20 leading economies in terms of international trade.

Last week highlight

The confidence of European enterprises in Vietnam’s investment and business environment slipped further to 62.2 percentage points in the wake of a worsening global economic downturn but still remains strong, according to the recent Business Climate Index (BCI) survey published by the European Chamber of Commerce (EuroCham) in Vietnam. The result were attributable to instability of the global economy due to the escalating conflict in Ukraine, persistent inflationary pressures, a labour shortage worldwide, and stagnant global growth. However, in the midst of the current global economic uncertainty, the BCI of Vietnam is still 10.2 points higher than its pre-pandemic level of 52.0 in the fourth quarter of 2019, and 1.2 points higher than the fourth quarter of 2020, when Vietnam was easing its pandemic-related restrictions.

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Let’s look at some other key financial and business headlines during the past week