Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam shouldpromote trade more overseas to bring in new customers and boost exports to the Associationof Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.

That was the message from Le Hoang Tai, Deputy Directorof the Trade Promotion Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade(MoIT).

He said the ministry would make it easier forlocal enterprises to enhance export of their products to the ASEAN market.

It would deploy measures to have more tradepromotion programmes, improve product quality and remove difficulties forbusinesses.

Especially for the Thai market, the ministryneeds coordination from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development(MARD) to negotiate with the Thai authorities to import more fruits andvegetables because right now, only five types are allowed.

Each year, the ministry had cooperated with manydomestic and foreign agencies to carry out trade promotion activities to theASEAN market, he said.

There have been three groups of trade promotionactivities carried out including organisation of delegations of Vietnam’senterprises joining international trade fairs and visiting regional markets forseeking business opportunities as well as arranged delegations of ASEAN’sbusinesses to Vietnam to find partners.

The ministry is also planning to host tradefairs in Myanmar to show the country what goods are available in Vietnam.

Nguyen Duong Kien, Deputy Director of the SouthEast Asia, South Asia and Regional Cooperation Division under the ministry’sAsia and Africa Market Department, said Myanmar had just opened its market inrecent years and was in need of high quality goods.

In the past, enterprises had concentrated onexporting to Bangkok, and ignored other areas of Thailand, Kien said.

Now, they should pay attention to thoseprovinces and cities or they should take advantage of the East-West economiccorridor to export Vietnamese goods to the region, including seafood,vegetables and fruits that have potential in this market.

Pham Tat Thang, head of MoIT’s Trade ResearchInstitute, said local enterprises should focus further on improving quality anddesign of product as well as branding to meet the demand of ASEAN markets.

ASEAN is recognised as a major export market of Vietnam.However, there are many key products that are not exported or are shipped insmall quantities to other ASEAN countries such as seafood, wood products, foodand steel, according to the MoIT.

To increase this, Kien said local enterprisesshould study demand and standards of goods to have strategies in place onproduction and trading of suitable and good-quality products. In addition, theenterprises should pay attention to meet Halal standards because the marketincludes some Islamic countries.

Tran Thi Ha, from the Ministry of Finance’sInstitute of Financial Strategy and Policy, agreed that Vietnamese companiesshould know more about regulations and technical standards or necessaryconditions for export goods to Islamic countries because there are a lot ofMuslims in Indonesia and Malaysia. This was a potential market that localbusinesses had ignored in the past.

The State needed to develop trade and investmentpromotion centres, Ha said, that would create necessary links at the nationaland regional levels with enterprises.

The State relevant agencies also needed toupdate new regulations and policies on importing goods of the regionalcountries, she said, so the local enterprises could have suitable changes inproduction and business plans to promote further their exports to regionalmarkets.

This should include business strategiesfollowing demand of customers in each ASEAN country and team-up withdistributors to boost consumption of Vietnamese goods.

According to Kien, there is no distributionnetwork of Vietnamese people in the ASEAN countries but local enterprises cancooperate with distribution systems and retail stores of overseas Vietnamesepeople in each ASEAN markets to bring Vietnamese goods to local consumers inASEAN.

One of the reasons why Vietnamese goods aredifficult to enter the Thai market as well as ASEAN countries is that Vietnamdoes not have access to large retailers there.

According to the MoIT, ASEAN is a key exportmarket of Vietnam, having fast growth in export value. Between 2010 until 2017,Vietnam’s export value more than doubled from 10.3 billion USD to 21.7 billionUSD. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are the countries importingmost goods.

Kien said the ASEAN countries are close and havesimilarities in culture and consumption habits so Vietnamese enterprises couldsave money for market and product research as well as transport costs.

When the ASEAN Trade Agreement officially cameinto effect in 2010, most of the tariff lines were reduced to zero to createbetter conditions for Vietnam to increase exports.

However, Kien said less than a third ofbusinesses had taken advantage of the reductions. Vietnam’s export goods toASEAN had accounted for 2.2 percent in Thailand, 2.7 percent in Malaysia and 2 percentin Indonesia.

He said local enterprises had not boosted theirproducts to Thailand because they thought products won’t compete with Thaiproducts in price and quality.

Meanwhile, some Thai groups had boughtVietnamese manufacturing enterprises to take advantage of free trade agreements(FTAs) and to dominate the Vietnamese market.

"Vietnam market is also a transit point forThai goods, with more than 90 percent of Thai fruits exported to China via Vietnam,"Kien said.

Many Vietnamese key export products had enteredMalaysia and Indonesia but the market share of those products was still smallsuch as rice, seafood, coffee, iron and steel, processed foods and householdgoods. Even in neighbouring Laos, Vietnamese goods had accounted for only 7 percentof the market.-VNS/VNA