VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam, where information cannot be checked immediately--businesses may fall down just because of rumors. It is estimated rumors cause the damage of hundreds of billions of dong.

Some days ago, people whispered in each others’ ears that one should keep cautious when eating hu tieu (a kind of traditional noodle with beef), because the sellers may make broth with sewer rats.

The rumor has made the poor, who earn their living by vending hu tieu, suffer. Meanwhile, Huynh Le Thai Hoa, Head of the HCM City Food Safety Sub-agency, has affirmed that the management agency has never discovered any case of making broth with rats.

Some months ago, people read on local newspapers that in Hoi An ancient town, a well-known tourism site in Vietnam, maize ears were boiled with zinc batteries and toxic chemicals, because the chemicals could help preserve maize and create fresh color.

As a result, farmers could not sell maize in the profuse harvesting season, while people did not dare to buy maize to avoid the toxicity.

Farmers in Mekong River Delta once suffered heavily because of the rumor that they matured melons with Chinese chemicals to make melons bigger and sweeter.

As a result, the melon price plummeted from VND4,000 per kilo to VND1,000 per kilo. Melon growers could only prove themselves innocent later when state management agencies stated that this was a false rumor.

Pomelo growers cannot forget that the pomelo prices tumbled dramatically after the rumor was spread out that pomelo may cause cancer. Square-head anabas, a big source of income of farmers, and other kinds of fish also saw the price falling down to below the production costs, because of rumors.

Not only farm produce, food products could also be the victims of rumors. Consumers did not drink milk on the rumor about bloodsuckers in products. They hesitated to eat sunflower seeds because of the information that the seeds may harm the brain. They got frightened when local newspapers warned that che khuc bach (a kind of sweetened porridge) is comprised of gelatin, a substance extracted from animal skin.

Most recently, a local newspaper quoted some witnesses as saying that they saw with their eyes an “unidentified object” in an instant noodle pack.

There have been no official statistics about the damages the rumors cause every year, but analysts believe the damage could be up to hundreds of billions of dong, not including the immeasurable damages, including the production stagnation or workers’ unemployment.

The representative of a sunflower trading company said just one day after the rumor was spread out, a lot of partners returned products. The company could not sell products for a certain time until the state management agencies proved it innocent. However, the sales now are just equal to 70 percent to that before the rumor came out.

Phan Van Lieu, Chair of the Hoi An City Farmers’ Association, said the association has asked the local authorities and competent agencies to clarify the “maize rumor.”

Meanwhile, the “pomelo rumor,” according to the Tien Giang provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, caused the damage worth VND100 billion, since the pomelo price dropped from VND10,000 per kilo to VND1,000.

The Vietnamese stock market once got vibrated on the news that Chair of BIDV Bank Tran Bac Ha was arrested.

Duy Anh