Vietnamese lychee on sale at AEON supermarket. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – VietnamTrade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade incollaboration with the Vietnam Trade Office in Japan on December 23 organised a trade exchangeto connect businesses of Vietnam and Japan in the field of food processing.
According to Le Hoang Tai,deputy head of Vietrade said given the complicated development of COVID-19, theexchange, held virtually, will create opportunities for businesses of the twocountries to strengthen business cooperation and recovery in the new situation.They will learn more about each other’s needs and capabilities, reaching an agreementon collaboration development between enterprises of the two countries,contributing to enhancing the Vietnam-Japan bilateral relationship.
Ta Duc Minh, Trade Consularat the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan said with a population of more than 125million people, Japan is a large consumption market for agricultural, aquaticand food products.
Vietnam is considered to havestrengths in the above-mentioned products and has good supply capacity for theJapanese market. Moreover, the number of people from Asian countries living andworking in Japan is also up to 10 million, in which, the number of Vietnamesepeople increased rapidly with nearly 500,000 people in 2020. Therefore,agricultural products imported from Vietnam have been warmly received byJapanese, Vietnamese and people of other Asian countries, he said.
It showed that there stillhave a lot of potential for Vietnamese agricultural products to export to Japanin the future, Minh said.
Addressing the event, KeisukeKobayashi, deputy director-general at Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO),said Vietnam and Japan have been each other's important trading partners formany years. The two countries have maintained a stable import-exportrelationship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Illustrative image. (Photo: VNA)The total import-exportturnover between Vietnam and Japan reached 38.4 billion USD in the first 11months of this year, up 7 percent over the same period last year. Notably, Japaneseinvestment capital into Vietnam increased by 54 percent against last year’sfigure.
The fact that the twocountries are members of many free trade agreements including the Vietnam-JapanEconomic Partnership Agreement (VJEPA), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreementfor Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Regional Economic PartnershipAgreement (RCEP), creates many opportunities to expand trade cooperation,especially participating in the regional and world’s supply chain.
According to a representativeof Kome Co.Ltd - a wholesaler and supplier of Vietnamese food in Japan, the Northeast country is facing the problem like other developedcountries. That is population decline and ageing.
Due to the lack of labourforce, Japanese manufacturers tend to look for factories in foreign countrieslike Vietnam to meet the domestic market. This is also an opportunity forVietnamese agro-fishery enterprises to seek cooperation, the representative said. However, he suggested that Vietnamesefirms work closely with importers to have full information on additives oringredients that are used to ensure eligibility before exporting, adding that therewere differences between Vietnamese and Japanese markets in terms of standard./.
