Vietnam spending up 15 percent

HCM City (VNA) - Global credit card provider Visa last Friday released figures showing that Vietnam's spending last year was about 92.98 billion USD, an increase of 15.4 percent over 2006.

The figures were based on updated data on annual commercial spending using
Visa's Commercial Consumption Expenditure (CCE) index.

The CCE index provides standardised tracking of business and government
spending globally and is recognised as an industry benchmark for measuring
commercial spending.

The index also showed that annual commercial spending in other Asia Pacific
nations grew to an estimated 18.9 trillion USD in 2007, an increase of 13
percent on 2006 figures.

The top five Asia Pacific economies in size of total business and government
spending were Japan (5.2 trillion USD), China (4.9 trillion USD),
India (2.3 trillion USD), the Republic of Korea (2 trillion USD) and
Australia (1.2 trillion USD).
"The markets across the Asia Pacific are varied in terms of
development and use of commercial-cards," said John Hazlewood, director,
Visa Commercial Solutions, Asia Pacific.

He added that the CCE index would help better measure the penetration of
commercial payment products and assist client institutions develop solutions
to meet the evolving payments needs of business and government.-