Foreign brands capturing less of China's consumer market

BEIJING, July 5 (Bloomberg)

Foreign brands are falling from favour in China, the world's biggest consumer market,
according to reports by Nielsen Holdings and Bain & Co. Domestic companies producing
consumer goods such as food and beverages or personal care products are slowly but steadily
eroding market share from foreign competitors, leaving them with 30.2 per cent of the market
last year versus 33.5 in 2006, according to Nielsen. Bain found foreign companies increasing
their market share in just four of 26 categories.
That's notable because Chinese consumers are more concerned with brand origin than any
other country aside from the Czech Republic, according to Nielsen's survey of attitudes in 70
countries.
Chinese consumers are interested not only in low prices but also higher quality, and there's an
increasingly noticeable trend of consumers upgrading, Vishal Bali, a managing director at
Nielsen in Shanghai, said in the report. Domestic brands get a sale boost as they embed the
concept of natural and healthy in their products, he said.
The stable economy, robust wage growth, and the convenience of e-commerce have
underpinned consumption as the main driving force for economic expansion. Consumption
contributed 77.2 per cent to economic expansion in the first quarter, up from 64.6 per cent the
prior year.
China's digital-savvy upper-middle class is fueling a consumption boom that will add $US1.8
trillion in new consumption by 2021, about the size of Germany's consumer economy today,
according to a report last week by Boston Consulting Group.
Chinese companies are making more inroads because they know their customers better, can
make faster decisions than multinational entities, and are better adapted to fast-growing online
sales, according to the report from Bain and consumer research firm Kantar Worldpanel based on
responses from 40,000 urban households equipped with scanners to track their purchases.
Domestic companies, however, still have a long way to go as consumers tend to opt for
foreign products in sectors such as personal care where quality is more valued, Nielsen said.
 Vietnam's foreign reserve hits record high of 42 bln USD
HANOI, July 4 (Xinhua)
Vietnam's foreign reserve hit an all-time record high of 42 billion U.S dollars as of June 30,
according to the country's central bank. The central bank's governor Le Minh Hung said at a
cabinet meeting on Monday that the reserve rose by 1 billion U.S. dollars from late 2016, local
online newspaper VnEconomy reported Tuesday.
Vietnam's foreign reserve rose to 34.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 from 13-17 billion U.S.
dollars in the 2009-2011 period, according to the Asian Development Bank. In the first half of
this year, Vietnam's import revenue surged 24.1 billion U.S. dollars year-on-year to 100.5 billion
U.S dollars, said the country's General Statistics Office. Meanwhile, Vietnam lured 19.22 billion
U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first half of 2017, up 54.8 percent against
the same period last year.
In June alone, foreign investors have poured over 7 billion U.S. dollars into Vietnam, the
Foreign Investment Agency under the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment said on
Tuesday.
In the six-month period, Vietnam's processing and manufacturing sector received the largest
FDI capital, with 9.5 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 49.3 percent of the total capital
registered, tailed by electricity production and distribution with 5.25 billion U.S. dollars.
Japan was the largest foreign investor of Vietnam with 5.08 billion U.S. dollars, representing
26.5 percent of total capital registered, followed by South Korea (25.8 percent) and Singapore
(18.1 percent).
As of June 20, capital disbursement reached 7.72 billion U.S. dollars, up 6.5 percent year-on-
year, said the agency.