Economics
Public Anger Prompts Vietnam to Put the Brakes on Investment
- Work at Hong Kong-owned paper mill delayed pending trial run
- Nation dependent on investors must weigh environmental costs
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To Nguyen Tan Phong, a farmer in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the foreign-owned paper mill built upriver from his catfish ponds was an ecological disaster waiting to happen.
Phong feared a repeat of last year’s toxic spill from a steel plant owned by Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Corp. that devastated central coast fishing communities and cut annual economic growth by 0.3 percentage point.