Business Beat
A Tra Vinh farmer got lucky and won a 21-inch TV set in a promotion campaign by the CP Group in Viet Nam. Upon buying hybrid corn seeds, he got a scratch ticket, scratching which, he learnt of the prize. But when he went to claim it, he was offered a VCD player instead, which was in fact the second prize!Apparently, the printer of the tickets got carried away and printed more winning tickets than announced by the company. However, since it was a small business, incapable of compensating CP for the goof-up, the latter had no choice to pay out of its pocket, but changing the huge number of TV ‘first prizes’ into VCD players instead, pending further investigation.
Promoters beware! on such small things does marketing hinge – a good campaign could, without warning, turn into bad publicity.
***
A really good agricultural trade model faces the threat of failure unless somebody comes up with a sound solution soon.
When it was established three months ago, the Can Gio Fisheries Product Exchange Centre was hailed as a breakthrough in bringing shrimp farmers and traders together – both of them benefiting from direct trade – and cutting out middlemen. Besides, people thought, farmers would go to the centre for market information and breeding techniques, and to meet exporters directly, getting lucrative prices. But the centre seems to have lost its attraction, with a mere 20 per cent of shrimp sales in the region going through it.
The farmers have many grouses against the centre – they get better prices from small traders outside the centre; the procedure for getting their money is elaborate and time-consuming that several deals later, they are loathe to use the system. More seriously, some deals are not honoured by buyers, who cut back prices, citing technical reasons. The farmers are also often frustrated that buyers do not show up on the contracted date to take delivery – and these are highly perishable goods.
How do small private traders, who have to sell to the same processing factories, always able to offer better prices than the factories themselves do, they want to know. They smell something fishy!
The Can Gio centre got off to a good start but its future definitely hangs in the balance. If businesses do not mend their ways, and quickly, farmers will go back to the small traders and the old bogey of sharp price fluctuations will return.
***
The HCM City authorities have at last deigned to acknowledge that Honda Viet Nam has legitimate grounds to bellyache after the motorbike maker filed a formal complaint about rampant violations of its designs.
They even cited a report by the market-monitoring agency of some 1,000 showrooms selling fake Honda bikes, models that are ostensibly registered and protected.
However, that is the extent of their commiseration – they want the company to educate the public through the media about their product patents and the apparent protection they enjoy.
Not only has the registration agency fallen down in its job, but wants Honda to give it a hand, spending more money in the process, on top of the big losses from patent violation in the first place!
At least the authorities were kind enough to promise greater co-ordination among various city agencies to investigate and deal with violations hereafter.
***
A HCM City directive two months ago, to restore sanity to the real estate market, has bankers over the proverbial barrel.
Though the directive does not ban transfer of agricultural land to people living outside the particular locality, local authorities disallow such transactions as a measure of abundant precaution. and most mortgages in banks for loans are of lands or houses, a portion of them farm lands; as a result, now they are dreading defaults by their borrowers, in the case of which, they can almost kiss their money goodbye.
Some banks have also lent for advances for land lots in housing projects. Under the directive, a delay of more than 12 months would mean that the land might have to be returned to its owner, with these prospective house owners losing everything, and the banks, their money. — VNS
