Vietnam’s automobile sales have borne the brunt of COVID-19 and saw a record low in August since 2015.
As multimedia and multi-platform journalism is becoming popular all over the world, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) has been making concrete moves to succeed as a multimedia agency that provides various forms of news services, ranging from printed newspapers, radio, television, online newspapers, multimedia services, and books.
Equipped itself with modern technologies, the VNA has worked relentlessly to solidify and harness its position as a provider of source information for domestic and international press agencies as well as the public.
The VNA has developed itself as a multimedia agency early, with a network of 16 news units, 63 representative offices across cities and provinces nationwide and 30 others located abroad.
Its first online newspaper – VietnamPlus – debuted in 2008 and television channel Vnews two years later. Various online newspapers and websites have also been launched since then, such as Baotintuc.vn, Thethaovanhoa.vn, Vietnamnews.vn, lecourrier.vn, Vietnam Pictorial, and bnews.vn among others. In 2017, the news agency expanded its database-documentation centre into the Database-Documentation and Infographic Centre, which produces infographics, motion and interactive graphics.
Publications of Vietnam Pictorial are now written in ten languages, including English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Khmer, Lao and Russian.
It has popularised its news stories on social media networks since September 15, 2015, starting with those in Vietnamese, and later English, French, Chines and Spanish.
With a goal of keeping up with today’s journalism trends and targeted investment, many of its news outlets have successfully applied modern technologies to create news in multiple modern forms – Megastory, Long-form, RapNews, Live-streaming, Podcast, Infographics, Timeline, Photo 360, and Audio. These are also owing to innovative mindset of its reporters who have strived to sharpen both their professional and technological skills.
Vietnam’s automobile sales have borne the brunt of COVID-19 and saw a record low in August since 2015.
In the month, the figure slipped 45 percent compared to that in July as 8,884 vehicles were sold, according to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA).
It was the fifth consecutive month seeing the downward trend of the country’s automobile sales.
In the first eight months of 2021, VAMA members sold a total 175,400 vehicles, representing a decline of 13 percent against the figure recorded in the same period of 2019, when COVID-19 had yet to break out.
The vehicles included 121,549 passenger and 50,034 commercial cars, down 18 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, 3,817 special-purpose vehicles were sold, inching up 1 percent.
The number does not reflect the sales of non-VAMA members such as Audi, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen and Volvo.
In the eight months, TC Motor of Hyundai Thanh Cong sold 40,248 vehicles, while VinFast of conglomerate Vingroup sold 22,030 units.
A total of 2,310 vehicles of VinFast were handed over to customers across the country in August.
The domestic carmaker is planning to release the first model of its VF e34 electric compact vehicle by the end of this year.
Since the beginning of the fourth wave of COVID-19 outbreaks in Vietnam in late April, various plants, car dealers and repair centres of VAMA members have to halt operations due to social distancing measures in an attempt to curb the spread of the pandemic.
VNA
