Keppel Land Gets OK For Vietnam Project
SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)--Singapore's Keppel Land Ltd. (K17.SG) has received an investment license to develop a US$130 million sports facility in Vietnam, the Business Times and the Straits Times report, citing company officials.

The project will be developed by a joint venture that is 90% by Keppel Land and 10% by Hong Kong's Chiap Hua Group, the reports say.

This would be Keppel Land's second Vietnam investment license in two days, after it received approval for a US$35 million villa development project in Ho Chi Minh City.

The details of Keppel Land's planned investments were announced at a two-day Vietnam investment conference in Hanoi, organized by its parent government-linked Keppel Corp. (K02.SG

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Is this like a sports institute or something? It should be coz Vietnamese suxs at sports. LOL

The success of Australia at sports is mainly due to our many sports institutes, with the major one being the Australia Institute of Sports (AIS).

i hope none of the corrupted officials got involved in this project, otherwise a $130 million facility will become a $50 million with the remaining $80 million in their pockets and when the facility is built, there will be cracks, subsidence, and other damage.

haha ok.. you cracked me up

Yeah, hope that this would improve sports in Vietnam.

hell yea now our soccer team is gona get better

COOL dud, once vietnam comes into the world as a prominent atheletic country and wow everybody with l33t soccar/badminton skillz then we'll get 1.)recognition, 2.)worshipness, and 3.) sweet sweet stuff

it's not gonna happen when corrupted officials still reign the country.

you speak of "hope that corrupt officials are not involved" quite a bit. i think you have to finally realize that things like do not happen in VN unless there ARE corrupt officials. nothing happens in vietnam unless someone upstrairs gets their share or their favors answered. it is just the way it is. even when it comes to good civic projects like this one might be.

even something as simple as opening up a small business in your own house... you have to kick something upstairs. whether it be the district manager, sector chief, or your friendly neighborhood cop.

would you believe that even as a viet kieu returning to vietnam to live you will have to kick some cash around just so they don't hassle you? think about it, most of these gov't officials get paid minimal salaries. nevertheless, how do you think they afford their massive double wide homes in the middle of the city? city cops are paid bearly 1,000,000vn a month. the average taxi driver for big companies like ML make 4-5mil vnd a month, and they're always hiring. but why is the most wanted job in the city amongst men a position as a cop? i met some cops through family and talking whom went from unemployment to owning multiple homes in saigon in 2 years. and that's not on a cop's "base" salary.

just the way it is. just have to accept it. we can't compare our american standards to VN's.

^^ my dad's visiting vietnam for a few months and sometimes officials drop by to get some "tribute" for him being there. whacky. but i do hope the new facility can churn out a few gold medalists

if you go to one of those vietnamese newspaper websites and read the daily news, you'll see that each day there are at least one story about some building, roadway, or bridge got damaged or showing cracks upon completion. What caused this to happen? well, i think we all know the answer. It's those bastards who don't care about other pople's lives being in danger, all they care about is to find ways to fill up their pockets. Imagine young children are studying in the classroom and suddenly the whole building collapses just because someone didn't want to put the correct amount of columns to support the structure. or a bus full of factory workers who just got paid from a week long of hard work is on their way home to their family but as they get to the middle of a bridge, the bridge snaps and kill everone in the bus. just because someone didn't care to put the correct amount of reinforcement in the decking and correct amount of concrete in the piers that support the bridge. think about it, they're wasting the gov't's money and resources.

VN Officials aren't that stupid. It was initially gonna be around $200 million, and then they take $70 million and then they announce they are gonna build a $130 million stadium, so no one can suspect that they are taking money.

and then from a $130 million facility to a $50 million worthless piece of crap which won't last three months due to cracking and subsiding. Example, the My Dinh stadium. It looked really good during the ASEAN games but after that it started to show cracks and subsidence.

When was My Dinh stadium built? During Communist rule?

I am so glad that the My Thuan bridge was all in the Australian's hands.

It's 90% Singaporean investment and 10% HK investment. I don't think the government will have too much of an oppurtunit to take the $130 mil. If they do get any money it'll be some behind the scenes stuff between the individual companies and the government officials.

My Dinh was built just before the ASEAN 2003 games started.

A lot of bridges in Saigon, most of them are small, can't even be finished in 10 years :o

i believe the reason this is so is due to a lack of available technology and education. sure, expense is a factor, but keep in mind that labor in VN is incredibly cheap and plentiful. they prefer to use it. they still build roads by hand for goodness sake.

a bigger budget does not mean a quality project. you have to remember how the vietnamese are. it's about quantity over quality. if you give them a lot more than it takes them to build something, they'll want to build two instead of making one really good one. again, this is just the way the vietnamese think. if you're flipping out over shotty workmanship or poor quality materials, you would fu-king flip out over 90% of everything you see in vietnam. but for them, that's just life as they know it. no big deal.

i have to contact one o fmy vietcong friend so he can loot me some of these money

uhhh, no

Uhm no, most of the reports from these unfinished or damaged infracsture always end up in corruption. I think you should read Vietnamese news more

What's all this sh!ts about corruption eh? The facility is a foreign joint venture so there's very little chance of money being siphoned off into the pocket of corrupted officials

That could be right.

They would do better just giving the $130 million to Olympic judges to get some medals.