Overseas Vietnamese get local airfare discounts
HANOI - National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines on Thursday
offered foreign-based Vietnamese air tickets on domestic flights at the same
price as those charged to locals.
Previously only Vietnamese passport holders were entitled to discounted
tickets and foreigners -- regardless of their origin
-- had to pay up to twice as much for travel.
An airline document, signed on Wednesday by its deputy general director Pham
Ngoc Minh and obtained by Reuters, said all overseas Vietnamese qualified
for the one-price system regardless of what passport they held.
All they had to do was prove they had Vietnam-based relatives, it said.
The current one-way fare from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City for Vietnamese is
one million dong (about $67) compared with 1.9 million (about $127) for
foreigners.
Vietnam's communist government is eager to attract investment from a
diaspora of nearly three million people -- mostly in the United States,
France and Australia.
Overseas Vietnamese remitted about $2.2 billion to family members in Vietnam
last year.
Reuters - August 16, 2001.
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