The Vietnam Economic Times on August 25flagged its ninth Golden Dragon Awards for business excellence fromforeign-invested companies in various sectors.

‘This year, the awards will continue to focus on honouring businessesfor their increasing efforts to enhance trademarks, as well as to makeeven greater contributions to economic development’, said Timeseditor-in-chief Dao Nguyen Cat.

Priority would also be given to other factors, such as sustainabledevelopment, creditor worthiness and environmental protection, he said.

The winners will be enterprises dealing with various products such asautomobiles, motorbikes, agro-forestry and fisheries, food, beverages,construction, construction materials, real estate, banking, insurance,machines, garments, electronics, information technology andtelecommunications, oil and gas and others.

The award winners will receive support from the newspaper to advertisetheir trademarks and become members of the Golden Dragon Club, aneffective forum for awarded enterprises to exchange businessexperiences.

The club has established a hotline for its members to address theirdifficulties in doing business, thus the club’s management board wouldconsider submitting these to relevant sectors, said the head of theclub, Nguyen Van Hao.

There were plans to organise more workshops and meetings in a move to help members foster mutual understanding, Hao said.

The awards ceremony will be organised in Hanoi in February 2010 withsponsorship form several Government ministries and agencies, includingthe Ministry of Planning and Investment, The Ministry of Industry andTrade and the Vietnam Union of Scientific and Technical Associations.

The eighth Golden investment Dragon Awards had been granted to 80foreign-invested companies for their excellent business performances./.