PRESS DIGEST - Vietnam newspapers - June 20

HANOI, June 20 2012

HANOI, June 20 (Reuters) - These are some of the leading stories in the official Vietnamese press on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

FINANCIAL NEWS:

THOI BAO KINH TE VIETNAM
- Petrovietnam Drilling and Well Services Co said its net profit in the first half of the year jumped 45 percent from a year ago to 760 billion dong ($36.3 million).

- HDBank said it has cut lending rates for individuals to an annualised 12 percent, for buying and repairing home to 12.4 percent and for agricultural production and exports to 13 percent under a lending programme to be implemented until August 31.

DAU TU
- Several domestic banks said they have lowered lending rates on consumer loans to attract individual borrowers as a way to avoid corporate loans and rising bad debt due to business difficulties.

LAO DONG
- The banking system's bad debts may range from 8.25 percent to 14.01 percent of total loans while 50-100 percent of lending in the real estate and stock markets are non-performing loans due to weak markets, said the Vietnam Centre for Economic and Policy Research.

- Song Da Thang Long Co said in a report its debts totalled to 5.07 trillion dong ($242.2 million) at the end of the first quarter, accounting for 96 percent of its total assets.

ECONOMIC AND GENERAL NEWS:

VIETNAM NEWS
- The Vietnam Coal and Mineral Industries Group, the country's top coal miner, sold about 20 million tonnes of fossil out of its production of 26 million tonnes during the first half of 2012, a drop of 10 percent in sales from a year ago, Deputy General Director Nguyen Van Bien said.

TUOI TRE
- Eleven cement projects in Vietnam have received government-guaranteed loans worth $300 million from foreign banks, but several of them failed to pay the debts and the Finance Ministry may have to settle the loans, the Ministry of Construction said.

THOI BAO KINH TE VIETNAM
- Many Vietnamese exporters may have to suspend rice shipments to China after Chinese importers have rejected their deliveries which were signed at high prices, an exporter in the Mekong Delta said. Vietnam has sold 2 million tonnes of rice to China so far this year and has delivered nearly 1.3 million tonnes.
- Vietnam has created a total of 734,000 jobs in the first half this year, meeting 45.9 percent of the year's target, Deputy Labour Minister Nguyen Ngoc Phi said.

- Vietnam's winter-spring paddy output rose 2.5 percent from a year ago to an estimated 20.2 million tonnes, while seafood output in the first half was up 3.2 percent to 2.6 million tonnes, the Agriculture Ministry said.

($1=20,930 dong) (Reporting by Hanoi Newsroom; Editing by Anand Basu)