COLLIERS Jardine, the property services arm of Jardine Matheson, is putting the final touches on a proposal to be the first company to value machinery and plant equipment in Vietnam. The property consultant, which obtained a Vietnamese real estate licence two months ago, hopes to begin valuation by the end of the first quarter this year, said Mr Ong Beng Kheong, executive director of Colliers Jardine's Vietnam Division. ''It is a question of whether we set up a consulting office ourselves here or go into a joint venture,'' Mr Ong said from Hanoi. ''If we can't identify a local partner, we'll go it alone.'' Negotiations between Colliers and Vietnamese authorities to offer consulting services had been positive, said Mr Ong. Colliers plans to provide valuation services for items such as factory machinery, and dairy product, construction, hotel and restaurant kitchen equipment. Such services would help curb the ''horrendous'' pricing abuse by foreign companies that bring second-hand plant and machinery to Vietnam and mark it much higher than the market value. The Vietnamese State Committee for Co-operation and Investment told Colliers during a recent meeting that the value of an imported power generator was declared at US$300 million but the market value was only $120 million. ''The figures being quoted are quite horrendous, and the Vietnamese Government is very concerned about this,'' Mr Ong said. ''If the cost of equipment is $100,000, the foreign partner would declare $200,000 . . . and the Vietnamese partner is none the wiser, so we approached the authorities to help them in this respect.'' Colliers, which secured a licence to operate a real estate office in Vietnam last November, will officially open a 250 square metre representative office in Ho Chi Minh City later this month. A team of five, including two Chinese-speaking expatriates, will help arrange and structure investment opportunities for international investors. They will also tap the pool of resources from Colliers' 24 offices in Asia and 128 affiliated Colliers offices around the world. Colliers' services will be chiefly confined in the neighbourhood of Ho Chi Minh City, but will also expand to Hanoi, where more and more Japanese, Singaporean, Taiwanese, Malaysian and Hongkong investors are flocking to. The Taiwanese and Hongkong Chinese had been among the biggest investors in Vietnam in recent years, but investors from Singapore were poised to rise this year, following the lifting of an investment ban in October 1991, Mr Ong said. Foreign developers could invest as little as $50,000 to build a villa or $3 million to $5 million to refurbish a 100-room hotel in Vietnam, he added. Richard Ellis is the only other international property consultant in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Colliers is trying to bring Ho Chi Minh City's chief architect, Dr Le Van Nam, to Hongkong for a meeting with investors in February or March. Dr Le, a member of the Vietnamese People's Committee and recently appointed vice minister of Ho Chi Minh City, is the director of the city's construction department.
