Vietnam listed as safe for multinationals
HONG KONG - Vietnam is the safest place in the Asia-Pacific region in which to do business, an international survey conducted in the aftermath of the devastating Bali bombing has found yesterday.
Hong Kong was ranked second safest by businesspeople who work in the city, according to the poll by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC).
The PERC survey was conducted during the Hotel Investment Conference in Hong Kong, just four days after the October 12 bombings on the Indonesian resort of Bali killed more than 190 people, raising fears of more attacks in the region.
The poll asked 400 regional businesspeople their feelings on personal security and to gauge the potential risk of instability in the places where they worked.
Answers were ranked from one to 10, with one denoting the safest.
The survey noted that pessimism among businesspeople working in the US and India had worsened significantly compared with a similar survey carried out last year shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"The grades in our latest survey for these countries were not only much worse than last year, they were higher than for all the East and Southeast Asian contries we surveyed last year," the report said.
Vietnamese businessmen graded the threat at 3.3 followed by Hong Kong at 4.43 compared to India with 8, Indonesia 7.33, Singapore 7.25 and the US with 8.58.
"Vietnam does not have a sizeable Islamic population of its own, and it is hard to imagine al-Qaeda trying to launch any attacks there," it said.
The report also noted that Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea were not "overly concerned with external risks."
However, any downturn in tourism would hurt their economies "and to the extent that Bali may have pushed the US closer to war with Iraq, they have to worry about the negative impact this might have on their major markets."
China's risk was rated as 5.25. Owing to its Muslim population, among which there has been some unrest, China was seen as slightly vulnerable, it said.
Agence France Presse - November 4, 2002
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