Companies brace for challenging 2023

Faced with a difficult global economic situation, Vietnamese companies are making efforts to overcome the imminent challenges. Viet Nam News finds out what problems they foresee and the solutions they are considering.

Ta Huy Vu – General Director of Schindler Vietnam

The current business environment is quite worrying and foreign investment is declining. The elevator industry relies greatly on real estate, which continues to face difficulties due to lack of liquidity and tightened credit. However, we believe that the Government will make appropriate adjustments to boost economic focus to the green economy, infrastructure, public transport, and supporting industries.

We have just overcome a challenging period for elevator industry, and expect the market to be extremely competitive in 2023. As the real estate market is plummet, we must focus on improving efficiencies via innovation and digitisation. To optimise business performances, we will choose quality over quantity when evaluating business opportunities and investments, and continue to develop our team competencies.

We provide highly efficient elevators equipped with PORT 4.0 wireless digital control, IoT system and new materials. So far, we have made more than 2,000 elevators connected to the Schindler Ahead server, which allows customers to connect and check their elevator status at any time through their mobile phones. We forecast the Vietnamese market for elevators to rise to US$500 million by 2030. Furthermore, we will soon use Robot R.I.S.E to install elevators in high-rise projects in Viet Nam to enhance quality control and ensure the safety of our field and commissioning teams.

Marc Despallieres, Chief Strategy & Trading Officer at Vantage

The year 2022 was a volatile one, with economic and political events affecting almost all industries, particularly the global financial market. This raises many concerns about an economy that is expected to contract in 2023. However, from a positive standpoint, we can see this as an opportunity to be seized rather than feared. Please see the comments on the development of the three product categories listed below in 2023.

Gold saw unpredictable fluctuations in 2022. Inflation, in addition to supply and demand and economic data, may be a reason why traders are having difficulty trading this asset. Inflation will continue to be a challenge for development until 2023, and the Fed's interest rate hikes will be the primary driver of gold's movements. However, from a more positive standpoint, gold is still regarded as a safe haven. As a result, it will not be surprising if gold maintains its uptrend in 2023, fluctuations notwithstanding.

The US dollar remains the "King of currencies," and its inflation and interest rates will continue to dominate other currencies. The evidence is that as the Fed raised interest rates, the US dollar strengthened, causing the EUR-US$ rate to fall below one, to as low as 0.95 – a rare occurrence. Furthermore, the continuation of negative interest rates in Japan caused the yen to depreciate sharply and relentlessly to fall to 151. As a result, it can be stated that when US dollar continues to be under pressure, other currencies will be extremely vulnerable in 2023.

From the peak of $69,000, we saw a series of sharp drops in 2022 that took Bitcoin lower and lower – now it is at $16,000-17,000 – and the expectation is for it to drop even lower, possibly to $10,000. This directly or indirectly caused shocks in the crypto market, and the collapse of many major companies shook the market at the end of 2022. Bitcoin may continue to fall or experience a few retracements in 2023, but the overall trend remains downward. — VNS