Gold trading has been slowed down in the local market because of recent concerns over the purity of gold bullion. The stagnation has been fuelled by dealers on the defensive waiting for official information on the management of gold bars on the free market.

The International Pepper Community (IPC)'s statistics show that the world's pepper production was 316,380 tonnes in 2010, the lowest output since 2008 and 0.7 percent less than 2009. Major pepper exporters worldwide decreased their exports due to the increasing demand for pepper inside their countries. The Vietnamese trade office in India said that Vietnam is a main center of the world pepper market and that India, a world leading pepper producer, cannot maintain a large amount of pepper exports because of its low pepper production output in this crop.

A tropical country, Vietnam is well suited for high quality fruit production. Last year, it exported fruits worth US$471 million, up US$33 million from 2009. The exports are expected to reach US$500-510 million in 2011 and US$1 billion in 2015. Vietnamese fruits have carved a firm niche in major foreign markets like the US and the EU.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved the conversion of the failed Ca Na Steel Processing Zone in the southern central province of Ninh Thuan to an industrial zone by 2015. Earlier in February, the premier granted the request of the Ninh Thuan Province People’s Committee to close down the steel processing project since its investors had not followed some of the project’s terms.

The Middle East includes 16 countries - Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, Palestine and Northern Cyprus. With the exception of Israel, most of the remaining countries are Islamic. The Middle East is home to two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. With a population of about 280 million and a high per capita income, the Middle East is a high-consumption and highly-solvent market.