Vietnam starts to build its first oil refinery

Vietnam has begun building its first oil refinery amid controversy that it does not have the finances to complete the project.

Senior government and communist party officials attended a brief ceremony to mark the beginning of construction work at the site at Dung Quat in central Vietnam.

Vietnamese officials say the project, costing one-point-five billion dollars, represents a decisive breakthrough for the country's petrochemical industry.

But foreign observers say that Vietnam will find it very difficult to raise the eight-hundred million dollars still needed to complete the refinery because of the currrent economic crisis in east Asia.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service