HANOI, Dec 29 (Reuters) - These are some of the leading stories in the official Vietnamese press on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories. - - - - FINANCIAL NEWS: VIETNAM NEWS -- Vietcombank, Vietnam's largest partly private bank, made revenues of 3.1 trillion dong ($183 million) at the end of November, compared with its 3.4 trillion dong target for the whole of this year. -- Bao Minh Insurance <BMI.HM> said it has met its annual revenue target, reaching 1.9 trillion dong ($112 million) within the first 11 months of this year, during which it made a gross profit of 136 billion dong. - - - - TUOI TRE -- Commercial banks want to resume charging fees, which have been forbidden by the central bank since July, for loan disbursements, because the central bank has cut the ceiling for lending rates by nearly 40 percent to 12.75 percent in the last two months. -- Several new property projects in Ho Chi Minh City have now resumed to take advantage of a sharp decline in lending rates, lower costs of building materials and on hopes for a recovery in the real estate market in 2009, developers said. - - - - THANH NIEN -- Demand for dollars has risen because investors have been trying to pay off dollar loans ahead of schedule to shift to loans in the Vietnamese currency after dong lending rates were lowered, Vietcombank Chief Executive Officer Nguyen Phuoc Thanh said. -- Dollar transactions on the unofficial markets only account for 5-10 percent of the overall trading volume, hence the recent fall in its price on this market has not had impact on the rates quoted by banks, said a Vietcombank forex expert. ECONOMIC AND GENERAL NEWS: NHAN DAN -- State agencies are banned from serving imported alcohol to visitors during the upcoming Lunar New Year festivities, the Hanoi People's Committee said in a directive. - - - - LAO DONG -- Hanoi needs to build 10 to 15 new hospitals over the next two years to meet increasing demand as the capital's hospitals now face an overload of patients, said Le Anh Tuan, director of the city's Health Department. - - - - (Reporting by Hanoi Newsroom)
Soldiers wade along a flooded road caused by a storm in Vietnam's southern Ninh Thuan province November 17, 2008. A tropical storm hit central Vietnam on Monday, threatening severe floods, landslides ...
