Socialist Republic of Vietnam

The Central Highlands coffee festival will be held in Daklak - Vietnam’s coffee heartland - from Dec. 2 to 5, where companies can trade coffee on the London market.
Computers with Internet access will be ready at the festival to facilitate transactions on the London futures (terminal) market, said Daklak chairman Nguyen Van Lang at a press conference in HCMC Tuesday.

The province will officially unveil the Buon Ma Thuot coffee trademark at the festival, aimed to expand markets and attract investment into processing, said Mr. Lang.

Several US veterans who fought in the Vietnam War are calling for the launch of well-organized theme tours to Vietnamese sites where they operated, an ex-interpreter during the War has informed Thanh Nien.

Le Thanh Giai, in an e-mail to the newspaper, said many US veterans, inspired by the story of a young North Vietnamese doctor’s diary they read on Thanh Nien’s English-language website, www.thanhniennews.com, were hoping to return to Vietnam.

Vietnam's consumer price index (CPI) is estimated to have risen 8.3 percent in October from a year earlier, the General Statistics Office said on Monday.
That compares with an increase of 7.8 percent in September and 7.3 percent in August.

The government last week forecast that inflation would be around 8 percent in 2005, higher than its initial target of keeping it below 6.5 percent.

Vietnam, reliant on oil product imports and hard-hit by bird flu outbreaks that reduced food supplies, saw inflation reach 9.5 percent last year.

Vietnam has decided to loosen restrictions on the use of foreign currencies in the country.

In a decree issued October 18, the government said Vietnamese and foreigners were now free to pay in foreign currencies and send foreign currencies within the country’s territory without permission.