Vietnamese brewer Sabeco, a unit of ThaiBev, said on Monday its business was beginning to regain momentum after suffering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and tough local drink-driving laws earlier this year.

Amid the pandemic and following the introduction of the zero-tolerance drink-driving law in January, Vietnam's beer output in the first five months of this year fell by nearly a quarter from a year earlier to 1.45 billion litres, according to the government's General Statistics Office.

"We have already seen green shoots of recovery and are progressively regaining momentum as we leverage on various opportunities to solidify our business performance in 2020," Sabeco chairman Koh Poh Tiong said in a statement to Reuters.

(Reporting by Phuong Nguyen and Khanh Vu; Writing by James Pearson; Editing by Ed Davies)