Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - There remains room for Vietnamese enterprises to promotetheir exports of farm produce such as rice and seafood to Italy besides otherexport items, according to the Vietnamese Trade Office in Italy.

Italyis currently Vietnam's fourth-largest trading partner in the EU behind only theNetherlands, Germany and France while Vietnam is Italy's largest tradingpartner in the ASEAN with bilateral trade turnover continuously increasing overthe years, the office said.

Overthe 11 months since the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) officially tookeffect (from August 2020 to the end of June 2021), Vietnam's export turnover toItaly reached 7.8 billion USD, up 22.8 percent over the same periodbefore the effectiveness of the EVFTA (from August 2019 to theend of June 2020).

Inthe first half of 2021 alone, two-way trade saw a yearly rise of 29.3 percentto hit 2.29 billion USD. Of which, Vietnam exported 1.5 billion USD worth ofgoods to Italy, up 32 percent over the same period last year while its importsfrom the market topped 759 million USD, up 25 percent year-on-year.

Vietnamesemajor export staples to the Italian market included computers, electronics andparts, phones and components, machinery, spare parts, seafood, coffee, textilesand garments and footwear.

Notably,Vietnam is the leading provider of peeled cashew nuts for Italy, accounting forabout 60-70 percent of the country's total cashew imports.

However,the volume of rice Italy imported from Vietnam is still lower than that ofother countries, the office noted.

Forexample, Italy imported only 7,000 tonnes of Vietnamese rice for a turnover of 5million USD in 2019, accounting for 3.1 percent of Italy's rice import marketshare. Meanwhile, the European country imported 70,000 tonnes of rice fromPakistan for a value of 64 million USD, 19,000 tonnes of rice fromThailand for 21 million USD and 16,000 tonnes of rice from India for 18 millionUSD.

Despitehuge potential available in the market, Vietnamese businesses needed tocomply with strict technical standards, regulations on certification andpackaging as Italy is a member of the EU bloc, the office warned.

Acomplicated legal environment and high technical regulations and standards forproducts related to health or the environment could cause trouble forVietnamese exporters, it said, adding that harsh competition from foreignrivals in terms of the prices and model of export products was alsoproblematic. 

Itsuggested the firms study the tastes of Italian consumers and surveytheir demands for the products they intended to export and learnabout the market share of competitors if they wanted to effectively tap intothis lucrative market./.