Vietnam bans Japan's Taisei, Kajima from projects

The two Tokyo-based companies will be banned for 12 months, Tran Quoc Viet, head of the quality control department at the Ministry of Transport, said by telephone from Hanoi today.

“This is punishment to the Japanese companies for their involvement in the construction of the Can Tho bridge that collapsed,” Viet said.

At least 52 were killed after the bridge, spanning a river between Can Tho city, 131 kilometers (81 miles) southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, and Vinh Long province gave way in September 2007. More than 117 laborers and engineers were seriously injured.

The bridge collapsed because of “unforeseen” weakness in two concrete supports that Japanese companies were involved in building, according to a report by Nguyen Hong Quan, minister of construction, in July 2008. The report didn't name the companies.

Yasukiyo Saito, a Tokyo-based spokesman for Taisei, said the company received a notice on June 20 forbidding it to take orders for the construction of bridges and roads in Vietnam for 12 months starting from June 30.

Satoshi Shigematsu, a spokesman for Kajima in Tokyo, said the contractor had also received the notification.

Foreign Investment

Vietnam resumed work on the bridge in August, and expects the project to be finished as early as February, according to a statement posted on the Ministry of Construction's Web site yesterday, citing Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai.

Japan was the eighth-biggest foreign investor in Vietnam in the first half, with $93.7 million worth of projects, according to figures from the General Statistics Office in Hanoi. Last year, the country committed $616 million of investments.

Taisei rose 1 percent to 205 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and Kajima added 0.8 percent to 261 yen. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average increased 256.70, or 2.7 percent, to close at 9,672.02 today in Tokyo.

Vietnam's transport ministry also banned 34 domestic builders from working on projects funded by the World Bank for three years, and from Vietnamese-funded construction for 12 months, because of violations in bidding regulations, Thanh Nien newspaper reported today, without saying where it got the information.

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