Hanoi (VNA) - Many businesses from the Republicof Korea (RoK) are looking to connect and get more information about theVietnamese market as well as investment policies of the country, especially in autoparts, mechanics, and electronics, said Vu Ba Phu, Director of the Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) under the Ministry ofIndustry and Trade (MoIT).

Speaking at seminar jointly held by Vietrade, the KoreaTrade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and the Vietnam NationalTrade Fair and Advertising Company (Vinexad) in Hanoi on April 15 in the framework of the 30th InternationalTrade Fair (Vietnam Expo 2021), Phu said this was a good opportunity forVietnamese industrial parks and businesses to connect with Korean firms toattract investment and expand cooperation in developing value chains in manufacturing.

Auto parts manufacturing is one of the top areas attracting interest frombusinesses in Vietnam at present, Phu said.

Participant focused their discussions on policies for developing the automobilemanufacturing and assembling industry in Vietnam, as well as how to form asustainable manufacturing link chain in the auto parts sector.

Pham Tuan Anh, Deputy Director ofthe MoIT’s Industry Agency, said that a number of domestic firms have actively participated in the global automobilemanufacturing chain.

Accordingly, the country’s total designed assemblingcapacity is about 755,000 vehicles per year, of which foreign-invested firms accountfor about 35 percent. Domestic manufacturing and assembling of many large firmshave meet about 70 percent of the domestic automobile demand with the totaloutput of passenger cars hitting 200,000 units per year.

However, Anh noted that the automobile manufacturing industry has not yetformed a system of large-scale suppliers of materials and components, whichmakes car prices in Vietnam still remain high compared to other countries inthe region.

In order to further promote the domestic automobile manufacturing andassembling industry and help the auto parts manufacturing industry participatedeeply in the global value chain, experts said attention should be paid todeveloping healthily the automobile market by creating a market large enoughfor domestic automobile manufacturers, and encouraging the use of locally-manufacturedcars.

Vietnamese automobile manufactures should be supported more to improve theirmanufacturing ability and competitiveness, they added./.