The Vietnamese Government has approved a plan which aims to help Vietnamese businesses penetrate international markets. The project will promote exports by ensuring that Vietnamese products are directly sold into the major distribution systems of countries in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia that signed free trade agreements with Vietnam.
In a recent interview Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Ho Thi Kim Thoa said Vietnam has recently signed many free trade agreements, adding the integration process required enterprises to enhance their competitiveness.
Thoa said local businesses have made great efforts to expand their markets, adding that many Vietnamese products with high quality and reasonable prices were favoured by consumers.
According to the Phap Luat TPHCM (HCM City Law) newspaper, Vietnamese food and foodstuffs have been successful in penetrating some foreign markets via the export channels of the supermarket system, which has made remarkable efforts to take local goods to world markets.
Nguyen Thi Thuy, deputy general director of Sai Gon Co.op that owns the Co.opmart supermarket chain, said they exported more than 80 containers of food and foodstuffs to Singapore last year, such as dragon fruits, fresh coconuts and many other processed food products.
A representative from Lotte Mart Vietnam said currently 24 Vietnamese enterprises exported their products to Korea via the distribution channels of the Lotte Mart supermarket chain, with more than 100 types of products.
Vietnamese products accounted for seven to 10 per cent of the products sold at the Lotte Mart supermarket chain in foreign countries, he said.
The most common products were dragon fruits, coconuts and durian.
He said Vietnamese producers were increasingly manufacturing high-quality products with reasonable prices, but the consumption in South Korea remained relatively low.
Therefore, the company was trying to enhance customer awareness about Vietnamese goods and was focusing on advertising some key Vietnamese export products such as fruits.
Le Van Khoa, vice-chairman of the HCM City People's Committee, told Phap Luat TPHCM newspaper that some large supermarkets in HCM City recently participated in trade promotion activities, especially trade fairs, in foreign markets such as Singapore, Korea and some European countries.
They held the fairs to connect enterprises with distribution channels and foreign partners, and to encourage customers to buy Vietnamese products, Khoa said.
Deputy Minister Thoa told Vietnam News Agency that in the context of the deeper integration, domestic businesses had to further improve their competitiveness, including enhancing the quality of manpower and management capacity and formulating brand-building strategies to conquer the regional and global markets, and fully meet the needs of consumers.
The government needed to further improve policy mechanisms consistent with international practices, creating a fair and competitive environment for businesses, Thoa said.
