Month: September 2017

Think of it as motorbike banking. For Vietnamese who live far from a retail bank branch, VietinBank scrambles scooters so its officers can meet clients where they live, tablet in hand. There’s also the strategy of DongA Bank, which decks out a van with four ATMs and parks it near factories to reach laborers. All across Vietnam, people are heeding the government’s call for “financial inclusion,” the global buzzword for bringing banks to the masses, and all the better if it can be digital. Hanoi has staked out some national targets for the year 2020, including an ambitious reduction in the share of transactions based on cash, down to a whopping 10 percent. That goes hand in hand with other targets, like increasing the number of point-of-sales (POS) devices to 300,000, and getting 70 percent of utility payments done electronically. But most seem to think those will be a tough goal to meet and that cash, the Vietnamese dong, will stay king. “Cash will not disappear in Vietnam soon,” State Bank of Vietnam payment director Le Anh Dung conceded, even as he’s promoting a cashless society. But nevertheless, the communist country is seeing a very visible sea change in the digitization of the economy. Take utilities. To pay for water or power, Vietnamese used to have only the cash option, which meant either stopping in at the post office, or waiting for a collector to ring the doorbell. But now convenience stores from 7-Eleven to Circle K have mushroomed around …

Jim McIngvale was standing in the parking lot of Gallery Furniture, greeting drivers and directing cars as they trickled in one sunny afternoon. It had been a week and a half since his local furniture store chain opened the doors to its showrooms and offered shelter to hundreds of Houstonians during Hurricane Harvey. Everyone had since relocated to other shelters, but McIngvale and his employees remained in disaster-relief mode as a long line of men, women and children snaked across the parking lot. On this day, drinking water, cleaning supplies, toiletries, clothing and free pizza were being handed out. “My parents taught me that the essence of living is giving,” McIngvale said. “That’s who I am, that’s what we do.” The local businessman and philanthropist is a longtime fixture in the Houston community, and he received national media attention along with an outpouring of public support for his latest efforts. What about the bottom line? How businesses respond in times of disaster can either enhance or undermine their public image. But does it affect their bottom line? McIngvale didn’t seem concerned. “After this hurricane, we took the people in and we said, ‘to hell with profit, let’s take care of the people,’” McIngvale said. “Profit takes care of itself. If you take care of the people, the people will take care of you.” “When businesses make public stands and they make public commitments to do good things, consumers take notice,” said Utpal Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University. …

During natural disasters, why do some companies open their doors to the community while others take advantage of its members? Tina Trinh explores the reasons why businesses react the way they do and the cost to their public image. …

One of China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges says it will end trading after news reports that regulators have ordered all Chinese exchanges to close caused the price of the digital currency to plunge.   BTC China said on its website it will “stop all trading business” Sept. 30. The exchange said it was acting in the spirit of a central bank ban last week on initial coin offerings but gave no indication it received a direct order to close.   The central bank has not responded to questions about the currency’s future in China.   There was no immediate word from other Chinese bitcoin exchanges about their plans.   Bitcoin’s value tumbled 15 percent Thursday to about $3,300. The famously volatile currency has shed about a third of its value since Sept. 1 but is up from about $600 a year ago.   Bitcoin surged in popularity in China last year as its price rose. Trading dwindled after regulators tightened controls and warned the currency might be linked to fraud.   Bitcoin is created and exchanged without the involvement of banks or governments. Transactions allow anonymity, which has made bitcoin popular with people who want to conceal their activity. Bitcoin can be converted to cash when deposited into accounts at prices set in online trading.   A Chinese business news magazine, Caixin, said at one point up to 90 percent of global trading took place in China. …

Radio Free Asia has joined the ranks of media outlets shuttered under the now almost blanket smothering of an independent press in Cambodia, as U.S. and European diplomatic efforts have failed, so far, to halt the county’s descent into authoritarianism ahead of elections next year. The closure of the U.S.-funded outlet, due to what it called intimidation, represents another escalation in opposition to Washington by Prime Minister Hun Sen. Conciliatory overtones made in a news conference Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador William Heidt have failed to halt the government’s campaign to paint Washington as the masterminds of a vast conspiracy involving all major opponents of the government. “These are extraordinary allegations. The business of diplomacy is normally carried out with careful and respectful language, the kind of language I’m going to use today. Difficult messages are delivered privately first. Friendly nations seek ways to bridge differences,” he told reporters. Two days later, the government mouthpiece Fresh News posted an article declaring the United States “should take a helicopter to transport its citizens from Cambodia, as it did in April 1975.” Having spent billions of dollars promoting a stable, nominally democratic Cambodia, the United States and the European Union now have only a beleaguered opposition to show for it. The party’s leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested this month in connection with Washington’s alleged grand plan. “Basically, after tens of billions of dollars invested in Cambodia, we’re back where we were 25 years ago … the more things changed, the more they actually …

Your afternoon chocolate bar may be fueling climate change, destroying protected forests and threatening elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in West Africa, research suggests. Well-known brands, such as Mars and Nestle, are buying through global traders cocoa that is grown illegally in dwindling national parks and reserves in Ivory Coast and Ghana, environmental group Mighty Earth said. “Every consumer of chocolate is a part of either the problem or the solution,” Etelle Higonnet, campaign director at Mighty Earth, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “You can choose to buy ethical chocolate. Or you’re voting with your dollar for deforestation.” Mars and Nestle told the Thomson Reuters Foundation they are working to tackle deforestation. “We take a responsible approach to sourcing cocoa and have committed to source 100 percent certified sustainable cocoa by 2020,” Mars said in an email. Both companies have committed to join the Cocoa and Forests Initiative, a major effort to end deforestation in the global cocoa supply chain, launched in March. “We will be working to ensure human rights are given a high priority alongside the environmental aims of this initiative,” Nestle said in emailed comments. Conversion to plantations Almost one-third of 23 protected natural areas in Ivory Coast that researchers visited in 2015 had been almost entirely converted to illegal cocoa plantations, the report said. Researchers said the practice is so widespread that villages of tens of thousands of people, along with churches and schools, have sprung up in national parks to support the cocoa economy. Ivory Coast, …

More than 50 local and national charities have raised more than $350 million in the nearly three weeks since Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas Gulf Coast, and the disparate groups are trying to decide on priorities while some storm victims still await help. Distrust of large charities such as the American Red Cross has driven many donors to smaller, local organizations. For instance, Houston Texans football star J.J. Watt has raised more than $30 million for his foundation, an effort he started by posting appeals on social media. One donor to Watt’s effort, Helen Vasquez, stood outside the Texans’ stadium and said she had seen a Facebook post listing the salaries of executives at top national charities. She gave Watt $20 instead. “It’s all going to the people itself and not to the corporations, not the higher-ups in the corporations,” Vasquez said. But most of the money raised for Harvey has gone to the Red Cross, which has raised a least $211 million. The rest went to other organizations, including 40 groups listed by Charity Navigator, as well as dozens of other groups and individual families raising money on do-it-yourself sites such as GoFundMe. More than $50 million has poured into the local fund set up by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief administrative official. Turner and Emmett openly urge donors to give to the local fund and not the Red Cross, saying doing so will ensure the best use of the money. …

The Northland area of Columbus, Ohio was booming in the 1960s and 70s. About 65 square kilometers, the area was a shopping and dining destination. Its centerpiece was the Northland Mall on Morse Road. “You couldn’t get a parking space at the mall at Christmas time,” Dave Cooper, president of the Northland Area Business Association, told Columbusalive.com. In the early 2000s, the area fell on hard times. Retailers began to desert the mall – Columbus’s oldest – for newer shopping centers and in 2002, Northland Mall closed, ushering the whole Morse Road corridor into a period of increasing crime and vacant storefronts. The city of Columbus went into action, creating special commissions and offering tax incentives. But when help arrived, it came from an unexpected quarter. As the old mall was closing, immigrants and refugees were opening up small shops and restaurants along Morse Road. A group of Somali refugees opened Global Mall just five blocks away, offering new space opportunities for startup entrepreneurs. Part shopping center, part community gathering place, Global Mall today hosts all sorts of businesses. And Global was just the beginning of what has become a corridor of immigrant and refugee businesses along Morse Road. “Some refugees or some immigrants have great business skills. So they got into the business without help of the government … and they flourished,” says Somali business owner Ahmed O. Haji.   Saraga Grocery “I bought ramen noodles and extra hot peppers. I like the fact that there is a big variety from all …

The two recent hurricanes that hit the United States raised inflation and puzzled analysts tracking job losses in Texas and Florida. Experts say the impact on the huge economy is “limited.” Thursday’s report from the Labor Department says overall unemployment claims declined 14,000 over the past week, after jumping by tens of thousands the previous week in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Nationwide, 284,000 Americans signed up for unemployment assistance last week, a figure experts say is low enough to show a generally healthy job market. Experts caution that the jobs data is likely to be “volatile” for a while, as the storms that put many people out of work also closed the government offices where jobless people file claims. PNC Bank chief economist Gus Faucher says claims from Hurricane Irma are likely to “jump” upward in Florida in coming weeks; but, Faucher says despite the storms, the nationwide labor market is “strong.”  Florida is about one-twentieth of the U.S. economy, and the Florida Keys, ravaged by Irma, are just a tiny fraction of the state’s economy. Gasoline prices have risen and may continue to increase after Hurricane Harvey’s floods and winds damaged and closed oil industry facilities, including nearly one-quarter of U.S. refineries. The lower stocks of gasoline forced buyers to pay higher prices. Refineries are gradually making repairs and resuming operations. Those higher prices for fuel and a boost in rent costs showed up in the newest assessment of inflation, which showed the Consumer Price Index gaining 1.9 …

A large influx of immigrants and refugees certainly helps boost the population of a region. But they can also have social and economic impacts. The northern part of Columbus, Ohio – an abandoned wasteland in the early 2000s – has been revitalized thanks to the new Americans. VOA’s June Soh takes you to the Morse road corridor where the city’s true entrepreneurial heart is. …

Illicit evasion and a thriving black market continue to mitigate the impact of sanctions intended to deprive North Korea of billions of dollars in revenue and needed components for its nuclear program. The latest round of United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea this week for conducting its sixth nuclear test, and the restrictions put in place in August for repeated ballistic missile launches, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) tests, could potentially have significant impact. Potential impact The North Korean gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016 was $28.50 billion, according to the Bank of Korea in Seoul. The August sanctions would cut the GDP by $3 billion by banning coal, iron, lead and seafood export industries.  The newest restrictions could cost another $800 million by banning textile exports. And reductions in oil and gas imports and limits on worker permits would also cut off needed fuel and funds for North Korea’s weapons programs. “If fully enforced I think that the amount of hard currency that North Korea would lose would be enough to certainly concern that leadership, because they don’t have very much hard currency and this will cause significant problems for them,” said David Straub, a North Korea analyst with the Sejong Institute. A significant reduction in hard currency revenue would make it difficult for the military to purchase weapons components and sow discord between leader Kim Jong Un and the elite in the country, whose loyalty is bought to a degree with imported luxury goods. Evasion tactics However few expect …

President Donald Trump has blocked the acquisition of a U.S. computer chip manufacturer by a Chinese company, calling it a threat to national security. The Chinese-owned Canyon Bridge Fund has sought to take over Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp. The U.S. Treasury Department, acting under Trump’s orders, said Wednesday it is prohibiting the deal. It says the president determined that it would put national security at risk and that negotiations would not reduce that risk. “The national security risk posed by the transaction relates to, among other things, the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer…the importance of semiconductor supply chain integrity to the U.S. government, and the use of Lattice products by the U.S. government.” Trump acted after both Lattice and Canyon Bridge lobbied the administration hard to allow the deal to go thorough. China has not yet reacted to the Treasury’s announcement. Trump has vowed to crack down on what he says are unfair Chinese trade practices, including alleged intellectual property theft. The administration’s perception that China is failing to put enough pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear program has also put a strain in ties between Washington and Beijing. …

As Congress looks into ways to fix the immigration system, often with the goal of safeguarding job opportunities for U.S. workers, at least one immigration organization argues that current federal regulations fail to protect foreign visa holders from job misrepresentation, recruitment fees, exploitation, fraud and discrimination. Four women who came to the U.S. on temporary visas were part of a panel discussion Tuesday in Washington to raise awareness of a system they said often treats human beings like commodities. “In the workplace, there were about 80 of us, women, and we had a hard time,” Adareli Hernandez, a former H-2B worker, said in Spanish during a discussion hosted by the Center for Migrant Rights (CDM), a Mexico-based organization with an office in Baltimore, Maryland. Hernandez, who is from Hidalgo, Mexico, looked for two years before she was finally able to get a H-2B seasonal non-farm work visa to work at a chocolate packing factory in Louisiana. Inequality in workplace While men who worked at the factory earned higher wages by carrying and stacking boxes, women were relegated to packing chocolates on assembly lines with no time off for illness. “We weren’t able to make complaints, because if we did make complaints, we were threatened by the manager. … We were told we didn’t have a right to file complaints, because we didn’t have rights here in the United States,” she said. But after four seasons as an H-2B visa worker, Hernandez fought for better labor conditions along with 70 colleagues. …