Collective Brands Inc., the retailer that said in August it’s reviewing strategic options, will open its first Payless shoe stores in Vietnam, Thailand and Korea this year.

The company plans to open 16 stores through franchise agreements in the three countries this year, LuAnn Via, who heads the Payless division, said in a Feb. 3 telephone interview.

“We were very interested in Korea; we think that our brand will resonate very well there,” Via said. “We perform extremely well” in developing countries, she said.

Collective Brands said in August that it was studying alternatives to boost the price of its stock. The company could be worth as much as $27 a share based on the value of its separate businesses, Morningstar Inc. has said.

Via declined to comment on the strategic process and how it could affect expansion.

“We have to be focused on driving the day-to-day business,” she said.

Payless, with about 4,500 stores in 34 countries, opened its first franchised unit in 2009 in Kuwait. It now has 140 franchised locations and expects to increase the number to about 700 by 2014. Topeka, Kansas-based Collective Brands also owns the Saucony, Stride Rite, Keds and Sperry Top-Sider brands.

Collective Brands fell less than 1 percent to $16.65 on Feb. 3 in New York. The shares dropped 32 percent last year.

Vietnam’s bonds rose Thursday on speculation policy makers will take steps to improve the supply of cash in the banking system, boosting demand for government securities. The dong strengthened.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung instructed the central bank to “solve” liquidity problems in the banking system in the first quarter, according to the government’s website. Dung also asked the State Bank of Vietnam to closely monitor the market in order to reduce lending interest rates at a “suitable” time, according to the statement.

“When liquidity in the money market improves, better fund flows will support the bond market,” said Tran Kieu Hung, a Hanoi-based bond trader at Bank for Investment & Development of Vietnam. “Investors will also have to buy bonds to make up for a large amount of securities maturing soon.”

The yield on the government’s five-year bonds slid two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 12.36 percent, according to daily fixings from banks compiled by Bloomberg.

The dong rose for a third day, gaining 0.1 percent to 20,910 per dollar as of 3:10 p.m. in Hanoi, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The central bank set the daily reference rate at 20,828, unchanged since Dec. 26, its website showed. The currency is allowed to trade up to 1 percent on either side of the rate.

In the so-called black market, the dong traded between 20,870 and 20,900 per dollar at gold shops in Hanoi Thursday, compared with between 20,940 and 20,980 yesterday, according to a telephone information service run by state-owned Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications.

Japan’s JX Nippon Oil and Energy Corp and Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA could sign a memorandum of understanding with Petrovietnam to join the expansion plan of Vietnam’s Dung Quat oil refinery, a local newspaper said on Wednesday.

Vietnam’s state oil and gas group has offered the two foreign firms a feasibility plan for the refinery expansion, which was conducted by Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp, the Planning and Investment Ministry-run Vietnam Investment Review said.

Petrovietnam, the facility owner, plans to sell a 49 percent stake of the $2.2 billion refinery to foreign partners to raise funds for the expansion plan.

The refinery chief executive officer has said expansion works will start this year to raise its annual processing capacity by 54 percent to 10 million tons, or 200,800 barrels per day (bpd).

The expansion plan will be completed in the next two weeks and Petrovietnam has been working with the two foreign partners on the signing, a Petrovietnam source said.

After the expansion is completed by 2017, Dung Quat refinery will process sour crude oil imported from the Middle East and Venezuela instead of the sweet crude Bach Ho grade, the facility operator, Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical Co, has said.

Vietnam’s dong climbed for a second day on speculation demand for foreign currencies will weaken as the nation’s imports slow and the trade deficit narrows. Government bonds fell.

The country’s trade gap shrank to $100 million from a revised $269 million in December, as imports declined to $6.6 billion from $9.36 billion, according to preliminary data released Feb. 2 by the General Statistics Office in Hanoi.

“The trade deficit has been gradually narrowing in recent years,” researchers Tai Hui, Jennifer Kusuma and Thomas Harr at Standard Chartered Plc in Singapore wrote in a report Wednesday. That means “more support for the Vietnam dong, at least in the short term,” they wrote.

The currency rose 0.2 percent, to 20,913 as of 2:56 p.m. local time on Wednesday, headed for the strongest close since Jan. 30, according to prices from banks compiled by Bloomberg. The central bank fixed the reference rate at 20,828, unchanged since Dec. 26, according to its website. The currency is allowed to trade up to 1 percent on either side of the rate.

Standard Chartered raised its forecast for the exchange rate by the end of the year to 21,700 from 22,600.

In the so-called black market, the dong traded between 20,940 and 20,980 per dollar at gold shops in Hanoi today, compared with between 21,010 and 21,040 on Feb. 1, according to a telephone information service run by state-owned Vietnam Posts & Telecommunications.

The yield on benchmark five-year government bonds added two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 12.37 percent on Wednesday, according to a daily fixing from banks compiled by Bloomberg.

Banks in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam are among the “most exposed” in the Asia-Pacific region to a sudden worsening of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, Moody’s Investors Service said.

The Australian, New Zealand and Korean banking systems’ dependence on foreign funding puts them at risk of increased costs in the event of wholesale market stress, Stephen Long, a managing director at Moody’s financial institutions group, said in a statement. Vietnam’s weak financial system and dependence on cheap dollar loans subjects its banks to tightening foreign- currency liquidity.

These banking systems are “more vulnerable to the first- round impact of a further worsening of the euro area crisis than other systems in Asia Pacific,” Long wrote after Moody’s released a report the topic. “Our base case is that the resilience of banks in Asia Pacific will generally persist. However, the risks to that scenario have increased, warranting a closer examination of how banks could be affected under more adverse scenarios.”

Australian and New Zealand lenders’ proportion of total external funding stands at 19 percent and 16 percent respectively, New York-based Moody’s said. Korea’s banking system has a foreign currency-to-deposit ratio of 328 percent and relies on external markets for 9 percent of its funding, the report said.

Vietnam ’s telecom giants Viettel and VNPT both have ambitious plans for 2012, targeting overseas expansion because the domestic market is no longer big enough, the Dau Tu (Investment) newspaper reported Wednesday.

Vietnam’s market is large, but it’s now like a shirt that is already too tight, said Nguyen Manh Hung, deputy CEO of the military-run Viettel.

The company needs a larger customer base so that it can invest more in new technologies and production, he told Dau Tu.

“Some say it’s necessary to have the technology, money and human resources, but for Viettel, a market is what’s needed first and foremost. Here we are talking about a market with six billion people, not just the Vietnamese market of 86 million,” Hung said.

The company, which has established a presence in Cambodia, Haiti, Laos, Mozambique and Peru, plans to expand to three or four new markets this year, aiming to double its phone subscribers overseas to 200 million. It is outlining a plan to invest US$270 million in Mali, a West African country, Dau Tu reported, citing an unidentified source.

Viettel is targeting a total customer base of 600 million by 2015, including 500 million subscribers in foreign markets.

It posted pre-tax profits of nearly $1 billion last year.

State-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, often known as VNPT, said it will also expand overseas but in a “cautious” manner.

Its overseas investment arm, VNPT Global, is now operating in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Czech Republic. The unit is expected to be transferred to MobiFone, VNPT’s top earner.

MobiFone officials said that under the current economic conditions, it’s not easy to expand. However, future plans have to focus a lot on overseas markets, because they cannot stop with the domestic market, they said.

The Vietnam Gas Association is requesting the government to cut the import tax on cooking gas to 2 percent from 5 percent so that retail prices can be lowered.

If approved, the tax reduction will allow gas prices to be cut by at least VND7,000 per 12-kilogram cylinder, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, citing Nguyen Si Thang, chairman of the association.

Local gas distributors have raised the price of a 12-kilogram cylinder by VND42,000 (US$2) this month, citing price hikes in global markets.

Apart from rural areas where coal and wood are still used for cooking, many households in Vietnam use LPG gas cylinders delivered to their homes by retailers.

The recent hike sparked strong criticism among consumers and advocacy groups as they suspected that gas companies had colluded to raise prices. The increase was the third in two months, bringing gas prices to up tp VND460,000 ($22) per 12-kilogram cylinder.

Thang has told Thanh Nien that there was nothing unusual with the hike. The increase was similar among all distributors simply because prices are calculated based on the same formula that the association has created for each region, he said.

However, Nguyen Mong Hung, chairman of a consumer protection group in Ho Chi Minh City, said the authorities need to look into the increase.

“It’s necessary to prevent any kind of collusion between gas companies,” he said, adding that the government should also set a limit on commissions that distributors are allowed to offer to their retail agents to stabilize prices.

An industry insider said gas retailers used to earn only VND30,000 per 12-kilogram cylinder, but now gas companies, in an attempt to boost sales, are letting their retailers earn commissions of up to VND60,000 per cyclinder.

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Vietnam’s bonds rose, pushing yields to the lowest level in nearly four months, on speculation lenders have surplus cash to purchase government securities. The dong gained.

The availability of funds at Vietnam’s banks has improved following the Lunar New Year holidays that ended on Jan. 27, Nguyen Thi Hong, the central bank’s monetary policy director, told reporters on Feb. 4. The country’s monetary policy will aim to ease market interest rates, according to a government statement released the same day.

“Banks still have a lot of demand for bonds as they speculate interest rates will drop,” said Cao Tan Phat, a Ho Chi Minh City-based analyst at ACB Securities Inc. “Liquidity at banks is quite abundant.”

The yield on the government’s five-year bonds slid five basis points to 12.36 percent, the lowest since Oct. 14, according to daily fixings from banks compiled by Bloomberg.

The dong strengthened 0.2 percent to 20,958 per dollar as of 3:50 p.m. in Hanoi, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The central bank set the daily reference rate at 20,828, unchanged since Dec. 26, its website showed. The currency is allowed to trade up to 1 percent on either side of the rate.

Vietnamese mobile application developers say their business is growing at a fast pace due to a strong demand in overseas markets.

Le Duc Bao, director of AntTek, said his company started developing mobile applications for foreign markets last April and since then its revenues have increased by around 30 percent every month. The major markets are North America and Europe, he told news website thesaigontimes.vn.

The apps are sold via major online stores run by Google and Amazon, Bao said. His company also works with mobile network operators to sell the apps to their customers.

Tran Viet Quan, marketing director at Ho Chi Minh City-based MeCorp, said his company is targeting the expanding mobile app market in the Asia-Pacific region. It has a presence in Cambodia and Japan, and plans to expand to South Korea this year.

“Most of the apps that MeCorp have sold overseas are game and social network apps,” he said, adding that the number of users increases at least 20 percent quarterly.

According to research firm MarketsandMarkets, the global mobile applications market is expected to be worth US$25 billion by 2015, up from about $6.8 billion in 2010.

It said while North America led the market since 2009 with a 41.6 percent revenue share, Asia is the largest market in terms of downloads with 36 percent.

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The central bank’s supply of money through open market operations in January, which helped improve the liquidity of commercial banks, will not fuel inflation, an official says.

A relatively large amount of cash was injected into the market before Tet, but the State Bank of Vietnam already began withdrawing the money after the holiday, when banks no longer faced liquidity problems, news website VnExpress reported Saturday, citing Nguyen Thi Hong, deputy director of the Monetary Policy Department at the central bank.

Hong said most of the cash flows provided by the central bank were short-term funds of seven or 14 days only. Although the amount was large, it would hardly have any impact on inflation, she said.

The State Bank of Vietnam pumped VND71 trillion (US$3.4 billion) into the market in the last two weeks before the Tet festival, which started on January 23, and has taken back VND57 trillion, according to the VnExpress report. That compares to a cash injection of VND132 trillion a year ago.

Vietnam’s inflation slowed for a fifth month in January to 17.27 percent, after peaking at 23.02 percent in August. Prices rose 1 percent in January from December.

Even though inflation has eased, Hong said it will take some more time before a decision on interest rate cuts can be made.

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