PRESS DIGEST - Vietnam newspapers - March 8

HANOI, March 8 | Wed Mar 7, 2012

HANOI, March 8 (Reuters) - These are some of the leading stories in the official Vietnamese press on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

FINANCIAL NEWS:

THOI BAO KINH TE VIETNAM

-- Some domestic banks have said they plan to cut lending rates by between 1.5 and 3 percent following a central bank's move to lower the base rate and the cap on dong deposits.

THANH NIEN

-- Hanoi-based Techcombank said gross profit last year jumped 53.18 percent from 2010 to 4.2 trillion dong ($202 million).

ECONOMIC AND GENERAL NEWS:

VIETNAM NEWS

-- South Korea's Posco Vietnam Stainless Steel opened a $130 million stainless steel cold rolling plant, its second in the country, in the southern province of Dong Nai on Wednesday. The plant has an annual output of 150,000 tonnes, making Posco the biggest stainless steel maker in Vietnam.

NHAN DAN

-- Doctors confirmed that a 31-year-old man from the central highland province of Daklak had contracted bird flu and had been hospitalised in Ho Chi Minh City. This is the fourth confirmed human case this year in Vietnam.

LAO DONG

-- Transportation costs will rise 2-5 percent following a 10 percent increase in fuel prices, said Vietnam Automobile Transport Association Chairman Nguyen Manh Hung.

-- The Vietnam Cashew Association has proposed that the government allocate 29.53 trillion dong ($1.42 billion) in soft loans for the sector to stockpile about 380,000 tonnes of raw nuts.

-- Vietnam and Ukraine should soon initiate free trade agreement talks, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told Ukraine Foreign Minister Konstantin Grishenko during his visit to Vietnam.

THOI BAO KINH TE VIETNAM

-- Vietnam registered 1.94 million telephones in the January-February period, up 34.1 percent from a year earlier, of which 1.93 million were mobile phones, government statistics showed. (Reporting by Hanoi Newsroom; Editing by Chris Lewis)