Check out what is in the news in Vietnam today:

Politics

-- In his speech delivered at a National Assembly meeting on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was positive that Vietnamese enterprises would successfully take on challenges and make the most of the opportunities that the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement will bring about.

Society

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Anti-flooding Program Operation Center is conducting research on a project in zoning reservoirs of different sizes, including tiny ones at local households, in another effort to combat the city’s chronic plague of urban flooding. The project will be submitted to the municipal Department of Planning and Architecture for appraisal in the coming time.

-- Nguyen Thanh Long, Deputy Minister of Health, on Tuesday led a delegation from the ministry to some communes in the Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang to investigate if blindness affecting over 1,000 residents in recent times is linked to onions as rumors have had it.

Business

-- In a meeting on Tuesday with Le Hoang Quan, chair of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, Kovtun Andrey, head of the city-based Representative Office of Gazprom International, which is a subsidiary of global gas producer Gazprom, called for support from competent local agencies for PVGazprom NGV, a US$1-billion joint venture between the Russian company and state-run oil and gas behemoth PetroVietnam.

-- Pham Dinh Thi, head of the tax policy department under the Ministry of Finance, told a press meeting on Tuesday regarding the revised bill on Special Consumption Tax that prices of several small automobiles would be slashed by up to 42 percent by 2019, while excise levied on high-capacity cars would mount.

-- Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung proposed at a National Assembly session on Tuesday that the government divest VND40 trillion (US$1.77 billion) worth of shares in local firms.

-- Speaking at a seminar in Hanoi on Tuesday, Tran Thanh Nam, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, underscored a paradoxically unacceptable fact that despite Vietnam being the world’s third-largest rice exporter, only after Thailand and India, the local staple has yet to earn a national trademark to date, which has negatively affected its export revenue.

-- Bui Tat Thang, head of the Development Strategy Institute under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, at a workshop on Tuesday expressed Vietnam’s hopes to receive support from Norway in helping the country build its world-class sea economic zones in some coastal provinces, particularly on Phu Quoc Island, a heavenly retreat off the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang.

-- The Ministry of Planning and Investment has sent a document to people’s committees in different provinces, warning about the boom of textile and garment industrial parks, intended to prep local enterprises for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord.