A ceremony to send back the remains of four US soldiers was held at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport on Tuesday, the 112th repatriation of its kind since 1973, according to the US Embassy.

The remains and their relics, which were sent in four coffins, were found during a cooperative search conducted between this October and November and were handed in by local people. Initial autopsies by the two countries’ experts showed that the remnants might belong to US soldiers who were lost in the Vietnam War. However, they were sent to Hawaii State for further examination. Speaking at the handing-over ceremony, the US Government’s representative expressed gratitude and appreciation for Vietnam’s human and goodwill policy as well as its effective cooperation in the search during the past years. Also on Tuesday a mass grave together with soldiers’ belongings was discovered during excavation work at the construction site of a drainage system in the central province of Quang Ngai. Nguyen Trong Luyen, head of Quang Ngai Town’s Army Steering Committee, said they are yet to identify the remains as also estimate their number. But local agencies suspect it was the grave of Vietnamese soldiers who died in an attack on Quang Ngai Prison under the US army’s control in 1968, according to Luyen. An excavation was planned on Wednesday to carry out further tests. Reported by Huong Giang – Hien Cu

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A worker at her rent house in Hanoi. Housing prices are so steep in suburban Hanoi that few people will ever be able to buy a place of their own.

The average income in the national capital is between VND10 million and VND15 million, while the cheapest dwelling of 50 square meters costs VND300 million, according to the Hanoi Socioeconomic Research and Development Institute. “That means a person would have to work for 25 to 30 years, and spend nothing in that time, to save up for a house,” the institute’s head, Nguyen Dinh Duong, said at a conference held by the Hanoi Construction Association on Friday. “So a huge number of urban residents will never buy a home.” The alternative, renting, is nearly as big a problem. There are now 55 industrial zones in Hanoi, but almost none supply accommodation for their workers, Do Quoc Tuan, deputy director of Hanoi Construction Department, told the audience. According to his department, only 30 percent of state workers have been provided with housing, and the college and university dormitories can barely accommodate 20 percent of the city’s 800,000 tertiary students. Hanoi will need investment of VND43.5 trillion to build enough housing for 60 percent of the students, 50 percent of the workers and five percent of low-income earners in the built-up area by 2015, Tuan said. His superior, Do Xuan Anh, said the task ahead was beset by “difficulties with policies to develop home funds and ensure investors get their money back.” “Housing development efforts are yet to meet the demand of young laborers and young married couples,” he said. In Hanoi so far this year, construction of 800 houses for low-income earners has begun in Long Bien District, and plans have been made to build housing for college students on nearly six hectares of land in two new satellite towns in Thanh Tri and Tu Liem districts. Duong said housing could be made more affordable by reducing the average area to 30 square meters or less and using inexpensive building materials. Nguyen Trong Ninh, deputy head of the Housing and Real Estate Management Department of the Ministry of Construction, suggested the government either invest directly to build housing for rent to low-income earners, or supply property developers with land to do the same. Duong gave the idea his support and suggested the housing problem might be eased if low-income earners accepted the idea of renting and gave up all thought of ever owning a place of their own. Source: Tuoi Tre

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Multi-billion dollar foreign steel projects in Vietnam are likely to face delays because of the global economic slump, even though demand in the country is forecast to grow 20% this year and 10-15% next year.

Foreign investors, including Taiwan’s Formosa, India’s Tata Steel, South Korea’s Posco and Malaysia’s Lion Industries, have pledged to invest nearly US$30 billion in steel projects with total capacity of about 25-30 million tons by 2025. But Pham Chi Cuong, chairman of the Vietnam Steel Association, which groups the country’s major producers, said the global economic slump would hobble on those plans. “Most of the big foreign-invested steel mill projects are likely to be delayed because of their internal difficulties, such as finances,” he said in an interview on August 27. Cuong said the two partners in the country’s biggest steel project to date, a $10 billion joint venture between state-owned ship builder Vinashin and Malaysia’s Lion Group, had problems coming up with the money for the required investment. The only foreign company that had made any progress recently was Taiwan’s Formosa, with its $7.8 billion mill project in Vung Ang, in central Vietnam, Cuong said. India’s Tata Steel was still sorting out a “land allocation” issue for the plant’s site with authorities in Ha Tinh province for its $5 billion project, he said. No great leap forward Half of Vietnam’s annual consumption this year of about 11 million tons will be imported but domestic producers had already voiced concerns about oversupply once all proposed steel mills are up and running within the next five years. “There are many question marks around how realistic these foreign invested projects are, given all the problems they are facing, both internally and externally,” Cuong said. “There will not be a Great Leap Forward here for the steel industry,” he said. The industry had a painful start to the year, with a slump in prices and demand. Some companies slashed work shifts by as much as two-thirds and cleared inventories by selling at a loss to service bank debt, Cuong said. A chunk of money from the government’s stimulus package, which the Prime Minister’s office has valued at $8 billion, has gone into housing for the poor and infrastructure, buoying steel demand, which he said would rise more than 20 percent to 11 million tons in 2009. “The worst is behind us but we still cannot be too optimistic because of the uncertainty in the recovery and the fast rises in world commodity prices,” he said. Demand would increase 10-15 percent next year, he added. Prices have jumped nearly 40 percent so far this year and are set to rise around 5 percent between now and the end of the year thanks to robust demand, said Cuong, a former deputy director of top state-owned steel group Vietnam Steel Corp. Hence demand for scrap steel, the main source of feedstock for Vietnam’s mills, are expected to jump around 35 percent this year compared to 2008 to 2 million tons, Cuong said. At present the country does not import any iron ore as a few of its mills are designed to use iron ore but if the foreign-invested projects are completed they would have to import iron ores from mines in Laos, Australia and Brazil from 2012, Cuong said. Source: Reuters

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