Australian business reap rewards of early start in Vietnam

By Robert Templer

HANOI (AFP): Alone in the dusty scrubland of an abandoned U.S. airbase in southern Vietnam stands a small symbol of Australia's march into Asia -- a factory producing the painted steel roofing that covers a million Australian homes.

BHP Steel, a division of Australia's largest company, opened its plant outside Ho Chi Minh City earlier this year, after weaving its way through the tortuous Vietnamese bureaucracy in record time.

"Being big and reputable helped. Also being Australian helped," said managing director John Gourlay, although Vietnamese friends have been surprised enough by his success to nickname him Ong May Man, or Mr. Lucky.

"Vietnamese and Australians share a similar outlook on life," Gourlay said. "And our political stance towards Vietnam has not been forgotten."

While Vietnamese have been gleefully telling newly arrived U.S. businesses that "the buffalo that comes late to the trough drinks muddy water," Australian firms have been consolidating their position as the third largest investors here.

Australia's headstart began in 1983 with a decision by Canberra to normalize ties with Hanoi, despite intense pressure from many western and Southeast Asian countries angered by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia four years earlier.

"This policy has been justified and has ultimately paid off," said Graham Alliband, a former Australian ambassador here who returned as a businessman. "We helped turn around Vietnam's relationship with the world."

Canberra was also among the first western countries to provide bilateral aid to Hanoi, marking a transformation from a former enemy that sent its troops here to fight communism into a close economic partner.

Australia's role as an "honest broker" in the Cambodian peace deal, largely put together by Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, added to its stature.

Prime Minister Paul Keating's visit from Sunday, the first to Hanoi by an Australian leader, puts a final polish on relations with Vietnam, now a testbed for Canberra's policy of strengthening Asian economic ties.

Australia's willingness to deal with Vietnam during its period of isolation led to important early investments, such as the telecommunications system developed by Telstra from 1987 that Vietnamese officials view as a model of how to do business here.

The unthreatening size of most Australian companies and a perception of them as "straightforward and open" have been helpful, said Denis Wholley, head of the Australian Trade Commission office in Hanoi.

"The partnership between business and the Australian government in developing relations in Asia has been well perceived," he said.

But many say they hardly needed a push from their government to invest here, despite recession-hit Australia having few of the obvious cultural advantages or large capital reserves of competitors from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore.

Australia had pledged US$ 620 million in investment by the end of 1993, with two-thirds of that coming from Telstra and BHP Petroleum.

Trade has grown from $41 million in 1990 to $366 million last year, with Vietnam wracking up a $136 million surplus through crude oil sales to Australia.

A large number of small firms, particularly those involved in construction and the service sector, have set up shop and are showing an ability to adapt well to the rapid changes in Vietnam's economy and laws, according to Simon Fraser, an lecturer in business studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

"Australian businesses are becoming more mature, they're learning much more quickly how to work in countries like Vietnam," said Fraser, who pins some of the success of Australians here on a relaxed attitude that works well given Vietnam's frustrating red tape and poor infrastructure.

BHP Steel's Gourlay says he has no doubts Vietnam "will be the next, if not best, 'Asian Tiger,'" an optimism shared many of his compatriots.

Such is the rush into Vietnam that one small enterprise has found itself trampled underfoot. The Australian embassy was forced to close its Billabong Club last month, no longer able to cope with the crush of businessmen at the bar.

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