PRESS DIGEST - Vietnam newspapers - Nov 17

HANOI | Nov 17, 2011

HANOI Nov 17 (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:

TUOI TRE

-- State Bank of Vietnam Governor Nguyen Van Binh is scheduled to report next week to the National Assembly on measures to restructure the banking sector to ensure the value of the domestic currency and stabilise the money market.

THOI BAO KINH TE VIETNAM

-- Changes in the global financial market plus domestic and overseas economic instability are behind Vietnam's stock market slump, Chairman Vu Bang of the State Securities Commission said.

-- The government is allowing Vietnam Airlines to be privatised, but the state will retain more than half, it said in a directive.

-- Sacombank said its consolidated January-October net profit soared 72 percent from a year earlier to 4.18 trillion dong ($199 million).

ECONOMIC AND GENERAL NEWS:

VIETNAM NEWS

-- A drop in demand for cement consumption plus rising costs have caused the domestic cement industry to suffer losses of 220 billion dong ($10.53 million) in the first 10 months of this year, industry reports show.

QUAN DOI NHAN DAN

-- Vietnam has so far this year recorded that more than 87,500 people have been infected with foot and mouth disease; among them, 147 children have died, the Health Ministry said.

LAO DONG

-- A project to turn Ha Long city into Vietnam's first city with free-of-charge wireless internet connection has begun and its first phase would be completed by the year end, allowing access in public places, said Nguyen Minh Hong, head of the Quang Ninh province's information and communications department.

-- Hanoi police said they had arrested a former staff member of the Associated Press bureau in the city on a charge of fraud. The Vietnamese woman had stolen more than 5 trillion dong ($238,000) from AP funds between January and June 2008.

THOI BAO KINH TE VIETNAM

-- Vietnam will invest more than $600 million in a space centre project scheduled to be finished in 2018, the Vietnam Institute of Science and Technology said. (Reporting by Hanoi Newsroom)