The EU has agreed to lift quotas on Vietnamese textile and garment exports, a move that will help the Communist country stay competitive as it works to join the World Trade Organization, state-controlled media reported Saturday.
The EU is Vietnams second largest textile and garment market behind the US, with exports this year totaling 633 million US dollar. Quotas were imposed on Vietnam when it first signed a textile and garment agreement with the EU in 1992.
The agreement is vital to Vietnams competitiveness since textile quotas will be phased out by 2005 for WTO members. Vietnam has not yet joined the world trade body but is striving for admission by the end of next year to keep from being muscled out of lucrative markets by members like China.
Meanwhile the World Bank said on Monday it has recently extended a 220 million US dollar credit to help bring electricity to rural Vietnam. The credit will be used in the next 7 years to upgrade or expand the power network to 2,5 million families in Vietnam, out of a total of 16 million people in 3,5 million families without access to electricity.
Klaus Rohland, director of the World Bank in Vietnam, said another 200 million dollar credit would be in place in 2006 to complete the rural energy expansion. The number of families having access to electricity in Vietnam has risen to 80 percent in 2003 from 51 percent in 1996, the bank said.
The Saigon Times Daily (Vietnam) further reports that the World Bank has cancelled the results of three tenders for the huge RT2 rural road project and banned the seven Vietnamese construction companies involved from tendering for any World Bank financed projects for three years.
An official from Project Management Unit 18, the project owner, told the Daily Friday that the ban had come after evidence surfaced of collusion in bidding for packages 12, 14 and 16 in October.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
