A customer borrows at an SHB transaction office in Hà Nội. Besides loans from the Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise Development Fund, many banks, including SHB, have also continued to provide corporate loans with low interest rates. VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Firms can borrow from the Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Development Fund with a short-term interest rate of 1.2 per cent per year and a long-term interest rate of 4.4 per cent per year, effective from October 4, 2023, the Ministry of Planning and Investment announced.

According to the fund’s representatives, the preferential interest rate is aimed to implement Resolution No 105/NQ-CP dated July 15, 2023, of the Government on tasks and solutions to remove difficulties for the production and business of firms.

Besides the fund, many banks have also continued to provide loans for firms with low interest rates.

For example, from now until May 30, 2024, corporate customers borrowing capital for production and business at SHB will enjoy preferential loan interest rates from only 6.97 per cent per year. Accordingly, SHB will set aside VNĐ5 trillion with interest rates from 6.97 per cent to support firms in supplementing short-term working capital. Enterprises that enjoy the SHB’s incentives include female-owned enterprises and enterprises operating in priority fields such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, exports, high technology, transport infrastructure, education, healthcare and green projects.

At the same time, SHB will also spend VNĐ1 trillion for corporate customers who need loans for car purchases with loan terms of 36 months or more. Based on needs and capital usage plans, customers can choose preferential interest rates from 7.5 per cent per year for the first six months or from 9 per cent per year for 12 months.

According to the State Bank of Việt Nam, deposit interest rates at the last quarter of a year in previous years often increased to attract idle capital to banks to serve the rising lending needs of people and firms for year-end, but this year is different as deposit interest rates at most banks are anchored at low levels and some even continue to decrease.

Specifically, deposit interest rates at some banks such as VPBank, ACB and Bac A Bank have continued to decrease by 0.15 - 0.3 percentage points for many terms since early this month.

The highest deposit interest rate at VPBank is only 5.5 per cent per year for 12-month and 13-month terms, instead of the previous rate of 5.8 per cent per year. Tenors from 6-9 months also decrease from 5.3 per cent per year to 5.1 per cent per year.

At ACB, the interest rate for deposits under VNĐ200 million, with a term of 6-9 months, decreases from 5-2-5.3 per cent per year to 5-5.1 per cent per year. For deposits from VNĐ200 million to less than VNĐ1 billion, the rate is added 0.1 per cent per year while for deposits of VNĐ1 billion or more, the rate is added 0.05 per cent per year. — VNS   

vietnam business times -

Swagbucks

All you have to do is sign up for a free account and complete tasks to earn points, or Swag Bucks. The exchange rate is 100 Swag Bucks for $1, and you can redeem Swag Bucks for Amazon gift cards or cash out via PayPal.
Swagbucks also offers various mobile apps that you can use to earn $25 or more every month, just for running videos. You can make around [$0.50 to $1] a day off this depending on how good the app is.

EarnHoney

Like Swagbucks, EarnHoney also gives you money for watching videos, playing games, shopping online, and taking surveys.
The site gives you Honey Dollars for completing their “entertainment activities,” which you can redeem for gift cards or cash out via PayPal or direct deposit.
The exchange rate is 100 Honey Dollars for $1, and you can get 5 free Honey Dollars every day just for logging into your account.
You can running EarnHoney at night while you’re sleeping.
If you have a PC/Laptop that you are not using this is probably worth running all day on there and probably make about $3-$4 dollars a day off it.

InstaGC

InstaGC gives you money for visiting websites, doing tasks, and watching videos and lets you cash out whenever you want.Pretty easy money for doing basically nothing except sometimes checking to see if the website crashed.”
For example, you can get $1 gift cards on InstaGC every time you rack up 100 points whereas the lowest gift card amount on Swagbucks is $3.

GiftHulk

Like Swagbucks and Earnhoney, Gifthulk gives you money for completing surveys, searching the web, shopping online, playing games, and more,but you can cash out via Bitcoin.
The exchange rate on this site is 1,000 Hulk Coins for $1, and you can earn up to 600 Hulk Coins just by using referral link.
Some people have made up to $80 in three weeks using Gifthulk.

CashCrate

CashCrate is a great website that pays well.
CashCrate gives you money for completing surveys, watching videos, and making referrals. The site has a $20 minimum payout and sends you a check once a month.

PrizeRebel

PrizeRebel is another highly recommended Get-Paid-To site that seems to pay well.PrizeRebel gives you money for taking surveys, completing tasks, and watching videos. You can redeem points for Bitcoins and gift cards or cash out via PayPal and direct deposit.

By Make Money Blog

https://goo.gl/4L3HzS

Desert Willow

BOTANICAL NAME
Chilopsis linearis
COMMON NAMES
Desert Willow, Desert Catalpa, Flowering Willow, False Willow, Jano

The desert willow is a little tree that adds color and fragrance to your backyard; provides summer shade; and attracts birds, hummingbirds and bees. The long, slender leaves make you think of willow, but once you learn some desert willow tree facts, you’ll see that it is not in the willow family at all.
Although its name indicates otherwise, this 10- to 15-foot shrub is not a true willow; rather, it belongs to the trumpet-creeper (Campsis radicans) family and it was named for its willow-like foliage. It blooms with large, trumpet-shaped flowers from the beginning of summer through the first frost and it is easily grown from seed.

Grow a Desert Willow

MEDICINAL USES

Silvery Fir Tree-Tomato Seeds

Price: $2.95

A Russian heirloom. An early season (55 days) dwarf tomato plant. Our TomatoFest organic tomato seeds produce short, 2', determinate tomato plants with wispy, fern-like, silvery fuzzy leaves that yield moderate crops of bright-red, 2", 4-5 oz., flattened, round tomatoes. A perfect tomato plant for growing in small containers and hanging baskets. Good tomato plant for a patio garden. A perfect choice for a canning tomato and salad tomato. A unique tomato variety. Disease Resistant.

Red Robin - Heirloom Tomato Seeds

Price: $2.95

Red Robin is a wonderful super-dwarf determinate cherry tomato that can be grown in a hanging container or pot indoors or outdoors. Our TomatoFest organic seeds produce dwarf early plants (in 54 days), 9 -12 inches tall that yield tight, abundant bunches of 1 1/4 inch red, cherry tomatoes that are SWEET with just enough tartness to perfectly support its delicious flavors. A great snackin' tomato.

Tiny Tim-Tomato Seeds

Price: $3.95

A true dwarf tomato plant. Our TomatoFest organic tomato seeds produce determinate, regular-leaf, miniature tomato plant that gets to 12" high that yields small braids of 3/4" red, round, cherry tomatoes. This is a perfect tomato for gardeners who wish to grow tomatoes in pots any time of the year inside the house or in limited space gardens outside. Fruit is juicy and has very good sweet/tart tomato flavors. An early season variety (50 days) for those who choose to harvest tomatoes as early as possible.

Bison - Heirloom Tomato Seeds

Price: $3.95

Old fashioned American favorite heirloom tomato that was developed by Dr. A. F. Yeager of North Dakota University and was listed by Oscar H. Will & Co. in 1937. Our TomatoFest organic seeds produce dwarf, compact, determinate plants that were listed in the McFayden Seed Catalog as a "self-pruning," and needing no staking. Plants produce huge amounts of 2-3", red, round tomatoes that have exceptional, rich, complex and slightly acidic flavors. This is a great canning and salad tomato. Produces well in cooler damp weather, greenhouse or containers.

Flyp is a new iOS/Android app that lets you have up to six different phone numbers simultaneously active on your smartphone. The first number is free and each additional “premium” phone number (a maximum of five) costs $2.99 per month (or $29.99 per year) to maintain. The Flyp app manages all the numbers, voicemail, text messages, and notifications.

It’s also important to note that the intention of and messaging behind Flyp is different from other disposable number apps out there like Burner or Hushed, whose uses often seem somewhat ambiguous. Flyp numbers are instead permanent numbers—or at least last as long as you keep paying your monthly bill.

Flyp have Quick Reply text messages (similar to Android Quick Responses). However the company are not going to market with Voicemail to Text transcription, but it’s on their roadmap for a later launch.

Read more at Cool Apps Now

Creativity means different things to different people. Apps such as Instagram and Magic Piano do not assume any prior experience in photography and music respectively, but are designed to help novices explore some of the intricacies of both art forms. Other apps, such as Vine, cater to different levels of skill. Shooting a six-second loop and sharing it can be done by anyone, but creative micro-film-makers experimenting with stop-motion and visual trickery are producing genuinely imaginative work with it.

Similarly, music apps such as Figure are pitched at both a casual audience of music-makers who want to enjoy stringing some beats and melodies together, and professional musicians who want to use it as the audio equivalent of a doodle-pad when waiting for inspiration to strike. Meanwhile, apps like Korg Gadget for musicians and Photoshop Touch for designers are proving that smart devices can fit in to professional creatives’ working lives as useful tools, rather than mobile novelties.

The best tablet and smartphone tools to enable you to make video, music, art and more

Music

Magic Piano
iOS/Android; freemium
Magic Piano is a marvellously creative way to learn to play songs on a virtual piano, or simply to doodle around creating your own. There’s a sizeable catalogue of pop and classical tunes to play along to, and good social features too.

Figure
iOS; 79p
If techno bloops and beats are your thing, Figure is brilliant. Anyone can use it to create beats, bass lines and melodies in minutes, but it’s also good for professionals, as it can export sounds to other music-making apps.

Auxy
iOS; freemium
Like Figure, this iPad app takes complex musical tools and makes them accessible to anyone with a slick interface. You create beats and loops by tapping and dragging on the screen, and can then export them to work elsewhere.

Korg Gadget
iOS; £29.99
The price should tell you that this is an app for committed music-makers: it styles itself as “the ultimate mobile synth collection”. Once you know what you’re doing, its virtual machines can produce all manner of enticing noises.

djay 2
iOS/Android; £7.99
Everybody wants to be a DJ, as the song goes, and djay 2 brings that ambition within reach. It’s a virtual pair of steel wheels on which to mix songs from your collection, or even from Spotify, if you’re a paying subscriber.

Sing! Karaoke
iOS/Android; freemium
From the maker of Magic Piano, this has a similar focus on getting you to share your musical talents with the world. You can bellow along to a range of well-known songs alone, or over the network with others.

Music Maker Jam
iOS/Android; freemium
On PC, Music Maker was one of the first popular mainstream music-making applications. Its modern mobile incarnation is well worth a look: a collection of loops and beats to arrange into tracks.

GarageBand
iOS; £3.99
Apple’s music creation app isn’t quite as powerful as the desktop version, but it’s perfect for working on songs, and then exporting them for a polish later. For beginners, its “smart” instruments help you make a listenable racket, too.

Video

Vine
iOS/Android/Windows; free
Launched as a way to share short video clips on Twitter, Vine has evolved into an inventive community toying with stop motion, jump cuts and other tricks. Master its editing features and the results can be excellent.

Replay
iOS; free
Replay is pitched as a video editor for Instagram but that sells it short: it’s an accessible yet powerful way to blend your photos and clips into short films for social sharing, adding text, music and filters to make them stand out.

Dubsmash
iOS/Android; free
Some apps catch on with the technorati, but Dubsmash is different: it’s a mainstream mini-craze. The app gets you to lip-sync to short audio clips from famous songs, films and speeches, then share. Often silly, but fun.

Meerkat
iOS; free
This really is a technorati craze: an app for broadcasting video live from your iPhone to Twitter for all to see. Big with tech journalists and Silicon Valley types, it could catch on more widely if people stream more interesting events.

vjay
iOS; £7.99
That’s vjay as in video DJ for this app, which allows you to mix together tunes and videos too. You can import your own clips or use preloaded videos from Snoop Dogg and other artists, and results can be shared online.

iMovie
iOS; £3.99
Apple’s video-editing app is an essential download for iOS film-makers of all abilities. It has many of the powerful features of its desktop parent, but the redesigned touchscreen interface makes it accessible to novices too.

Movie Edit Touch
Android/Windows; freemium
If you’re looking for a good iMovie alternative, Magix’s Movie Edit Touch is well worth a try. Importing clips, cutting them together and adding a soundtrack is simple, with extra features available as in-app purchases.

Vyclone
iOS/Android/Windows; free
This should be more popular than it is: when you and several friends are all shooting clips at the same event, it stitches together your footage into multi-angle videos. It’s particularly good for parties and weddings.

YouTube Capture
iOS; free
If you’re keen to just shoot and share on YouTube, the online video service’s app is very handy. You can capture several clips, then rearrange them, add a soundtrack, and let the app tweak the colour and de-wobble your footage.

Cinamatic
iOS; freemium
This is made by the company behind photography app Hipstamatic, with a similar focus on retro visual effects. Record clips up to 60 seconds long, apply a range of filters and then share to YouTube and various social networks.

Photography

Instagram
iOS/Android/Windows; free
The most popular photo-sharing app, and a more powerful creative tool than many realise. You can choose from its preset filters, but try diving deeper and adjusting your shots’ tone, warmth, shadows and other attributes.

Camera51
Android; free
It’s coming to iOS soon, but for now this clever app is Android-only. Its schtick is automatic composition: detecting faces and other key attributes in view, and using that data to guide the shot. It really does work well.

Pixelmator
iOS; £7.99
This could be in the art category, since it includes painting and drawing features. But Pixelmator’s strength is as much about editing your own photographs, adding text, frames, and using one-tap image-improving tools.

Frontback
iOS/Android; free
The name says it all. Frontback takes two pictures when you tap the shutter: one using the front camera on your smartphone, the other using the back camera. It then puts them into one image for sharing.

Enlight
iOS; £2.99
Another editing app, which walks the line between accessibility and complexity perfectly. It has a range of tools for gussying up your snaps, including overlaying one on another, with a view towards social sharing.

Camera Awesome
iOS/Android; freemium
Hats off to developer SmugMug for coming up with a feature named “Awesomize” – a one-tap process to improve your photo. But it has plenty of smarts beyond that, with filters and presets available.

VSCO Cam
iOS/Android; freemium
VSCO Cam is one of the most established mobile apps: a powerful replacement for the default camera app on your device, with tools to capture shots in the styles you prefer, and a gallery of inspiration from other snappers.

Facetune
iOS/Android/Windows; £2.99
The idea of a dedicated selfie editor will send many people running for the hills, but Facetune isn’t just for digital narcissists. It’s good for tweaking any portrait shot. You can even remove grey hairs.

Dubble
iOS; free
A number of apps help you to create double exposures. Dubble’s twist is that it helps you do it with random strangers around the world. It sounds like a novelty, but the results are frequently rather wonderful.

Pinterest
iOS/Android; free
Visual sharing site Pinterest isn’t just about photography, but the ability to post new “pins” from your phone using its camera is one of its best features. If you thrive on spotting beautiful things, create a board and try it.

Art

Paper by FiftyThree
iOS; freemium
Like a digital version of an artist’s sketchbook, with a range of virtual pens and tools to sketch, write and scribble whatever you like – from artworks to diagrams. There’s also a stylus – Pencil – to go with it.

Autodesk SketchBook
iOS/Android; freemium
Autodesk has plenty of history with graphics apps on computers, and its tablet products reflect that. This is an excellent painting and drawing app at its basic level, with in-app purchases of tools expanding it for pros.

Bamboo Paper
iOS/Android/Windows; freemium
Like Paper by FiftyThree but also available for Android, this is another digital sketchbook for creatives of all abilities, with plenty of drawing and writing tools, and the ability to share to social networks.

Tayasui Sketches
iOS; freemium
A lot of artists swear by this over better-known drawing and painting apps. In the right hands, it can produce beautiful images, while its support for pressure-sensitive styli gives it another layer of flexibility.

Loop
iOS; free
Loop is a joy: it makes “hand-drawn animations” where your scribblings come to life, and can then be shared on Tumblr or saved for other kinds of social sharing. The more you play with it, the more potential you’ll find.

Photoshop Touch
iOS/Android; £3.99/£6.99
Adobe’s Photoshop remains one of the most popular art and editing applications for computers. Its touchscreen-friendly version is impressive too: very good for working on your images on the move, then exporting them.

AutoCAD 360
iOS/Android; freemium
One for the professionals, here, with the well-known computer-aided design software translating well to touchscreens. It ties in to a cloud service, so you can easily share your drawings and look at your archives.

Procreate
iOS; £4.49
There are more brushes than you can shake a stick at in this illustration app – more than 120 in total. Something for every artist, then, and it’s more than capable of handling large, complex work as well as quick sketches.

Writing

iA Writer
iOS/Android; £7.99
Journalists and writers alike swear by this minimalist app, with its interface that gets out of the way when you’re typing, and a “focus mode” that cuts out everything around the current sentence when you really need to concentrate.

HaikuJAM
iOS/Android; free
There’s great potential in the idea of collaborative writing using apps, even when it’s just for fun. This gets you writing poetry and stories with other people – friends and strangers alike – as well as reading others’ attempts.

Foldpass
iOS; free
This is another collaborative app, but one based purely on haiku writing. You come up with a line, then invite friends to write the next one, before adding an image and sharing the results. There’s something special about the experience.

Writing Challenge
iOS/Android; £1.49/£1.29
Got writer’s block? This app may help. It gives you a prompt to start writing a story, then throws more ideas in at preset intervals. The results may or may not be good, but it should at least get you back in the rhythm of writing.

Wattpad
iOS/Android; free
A community for free, short and episodic fiction, with a huge catalogue of stories to read. But it’s also a place to write: you can use the app to tap out tales whenever inspiration strikes, then share them.

Do Note by IFTTT
iOS/Android; free
If you’re the kind of writer who comes up with lots of ideas, Do Note could be very handy. You set up “recipes” to take action on your notes – whether that’s emailing them to yourself or saving them to Evernote.

Children

Makies Fashion
iOS/Android; £2.29/£1.99
Can children show flair as catwalk designers? They can in Makies Fashion, which encourages kids to create patterns and outfits for virtual characters, then take virtual photos of them posing.

Minecraft
iOS/Android/Windows; £4.99
Just in case there are a few parents who haven’t heard of Minecraft yet, this isn’t just a game of survival against creepers, spiders and other nasties. It’s a wonderful creative sandbox for building and digital dreaming.

Night Zookeeper
iOS/Android; freemium
Available as a web app rather than a native app – Google it to find it – this is creative drawing and storytelling for children based at a magical zoo. It aims to unlock kids’ imaginations with careful prompting and gameplay.

Tynker
iOS/Android; freemium
One of a flurry of apps teaching children programming skills. It takes the form of a series of challenges where they use logic to solve the puzzles. There’s also a sandbox mode where they can make their own games.

TeleStory
iOS; free
Even children can be film-makers with mobile devices, as TeleStory shows. It gets youngsters to make their own “TV shows” and music videos, with a range of themes and digital costumes to superimpose.

Curious Words
iOS; £1.49
More video here: Curious Words gets children to record one-second video clips in response to random words, then turns them into short films with music. The idea is to get them out into the real world looking for material.

Gruffalo: Photo
iOS; £1.49
Hopefully your children don’t have terrible claws, teeth or tusks, but they can get some of that into their photos with this official Gruffalo app. It lets them take photos, then add in digital stickers of the book’s characters.

Disney Frozen: Story Theater
iOS; £4.49
Disney’s apps are like puppet shows where children pick scenes and characters, then make up their own stories. This does the trick for Frozen, encouraging them to invent new tales involving Elsa, Anna, Olaf and co.