Insurance premium revenues in Vietnam in 2005 surged 18.2 percent to some 15 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (943.4 million U.S. dollars), a local industry official told Xinhua on Wednesday.

"According to our initial statistics, life insurance premium revenues stood at 9.1 trillion VND (572.3 million dollars), and non-life 5.9 trillion VND (nearly 371.1 million dollars) in 2005. The respective figures in 2004 were 7,811 billion VND (nearly 491. 3 million dollars) and 4,878 billion VND (306.8 million dollars)," said Phung Dac Loc, general secretary of the Vietnam Insurance Association.

Vietnam's insurance premium revenues will increase 15-20 percent this year, he predicted, noting that more and more organizations and individuals in the country are interested in diversified insurance services in recent years.

Combined insurance premium revenues will make up 4.2 percent of Vietnam's gross domestic product in 2010, up from 2 percent in 2004 and nearly 0.4 percent in 1993, the Insurance Department under the country's Finance Ministry announced recently.

To foster the local insurance market, whose annual growth rate was 29 percent in the 1993-2004 period, Vietnam will center on improving its legal environment to meet international criteria, maintaining the close management mechanism to ensure fair competition and stable development, and fulfilling commitments on international cooperation in the insurance industry, said the department.

Vietnam currently houses eight life insurers, 16 non-life ones and one re-insurance company, many of them joint ventures and wholly foreign-invested enterprises, Loc said.

In 2002, Manulife Vietnam declared it had become the first profitable life insurer in the country after three years of operation. In 2004, Prudential Vietnam said it gained profits of 61 billion VND (over 3.8 million dollars) after five years of operation.

Source: Xinhua