VietJetAir places firm orders for Airbus jets
Last updated: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 12:30
Thanh Nien News
A worker pumps fuel into a Vietjet Air A320 aircraft, in front of a Vietnam Airlines aircraft at Tan Son Nhat airport in Vietnam's southern Ho Chi Minh city October 20, 2013.
Low-cost Vietnam airline, VietJetAir, placed an order for up to 100 Airbus (AIR.PA) aircraft, the latest entrant seeking to tap into a booming Southeast Asian market.
The airline placed a firm order for 63 jets and 30 purchase options and will lease the remainder, VietJetAir officials said at a signing ceremony with Airbus at the Singapore Airshow on Tuesday.
The purchase agreement covers firm orders for 42 A320neo, 14 A320ceo and seven A321ceo.
Last year, privately owned VietJetAir and Airbus agreed a provisional order for the 100 jets but the deal did not show up in the order book of Airbus in its 2013 data.
Thai retail giant to open department store chain in Vietnam
Last updated: Sunday, February 09, 2014 16:00
Thanh Nien
Thailand's leading retailer Central Group has announced an expansion of its presence in Vietnam by bringing the Robinsons Department Store to Hanoi next month.
Chief executive Tos Chirathivat told the Bangkok Post newspaper that the opening follows the group’s successful distribution of its clothing stores SuperSports, Crocs and New Balance in Vietnam through its subsidiaries.
PetroVietnam to import coal from 2017 for power plants
HANOI Mon Feb 10, 2014 5:01am EST
Reuters
PV Coal officials sign contract to buy coal from Australian partner.— Photo Pvcoal.com.vn
Feb 10 (Reuters) - State oil and gas group Petrovietnam is looking to buy around 10 million tonnes of
coal a year, mostly from
Australia and
Indonesia, to feed domestic thermal power plants from 2017, a company official said on Monday.
Vietnam, a net
coal exporter, has been cutting its annual export volumes of the fossil fuel in recent years to fill growing demand from coal-fired power plants at home. Domestic output has also been falling after decades of mining activity.
"We have to feed three thermal power plants, with operation slated to start from 2017," said the official at Petrovietnam Power Coal Import and Supply Co (PV Power Coal), the importing arm of the state group.
The plants, two of which are being developed in the Mekong Delta in the country's southern region and another scheduled in the central province of Quang Binh, need a combined 10 million tonnes of coal annually, he said.
Most of Vietnam's coal reserves lies in the northern region, including Quang Ninh province, the coal hub, and in the Red River basin, where most of the thermal fuel remains untapped.
PV Power Coal has signed initial framework agreements for a combined annual volume of up to 12 million tonnes with mining firms in
Indonesia and
Australia, including Australia's Ensham Coal Sales, the Vietnamese
company said in an undated statement.
Apart from Petrovietnam, Vinacomin, the country's top mining group, has also been building coal-fired power plants. It is seeking to buy coal from Australia and
Russia, and has already been importing a small volume of Indonesian coal since 2011.
Last year Vietnam's coal exports dropped to 12.8 million tonnes, down nearly 16 percent from 2012, based on government data. The country does not publish coal import data in its official statistics.
Coal accounts for a third of Southeast Asia's energy mix and
natural gas for 44 percent, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which formulates energy policy for industrialised countries.
Power generation capacity in the region is set to rise by 50 percent during the current decade, of which more than half will be coal-fired, the IEA said in December. (Reporting by
Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Tom Hogue)