Officers of the Coc Nam Customs Department in Lang Son province, which shares a border with China, perform a check on imported products. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Economic and trade relations between Vietnam andChina have been developing in a positive direction, as shown by the continuousincrease of bilateral trade turnover between the two countries. Vietnam is fastbecoming an attractive investment destination for Chinese enterprises.
According to the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning andInvestment, China invested about 1.6 billion USD in Vietnam in the first fourthmonths of this year, making it the country’s fourth largest source of foreigninvestment.
Several large projects were funded by Chinese investors in the period includinga tire manufacturing project with total registered capital of 280 million USD inthe southern province of Tay Ninh and another tire project of Advance Tire(Vietnam) Co. Ltd with registered capital of 214.4 million USD in the southernprovince of Tien Giang.
China has been Vietnam’s biggest trade partner since 2004, and bilateral tradehas been continuing its strong growth. China is currently Vietnam’s secondlargest export market after the United States. Vietnam is also China's largesttrading partner in ASEAN and its eighth largest in the world. It is China’sfifth largest export market and ninth largest import market.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam–China trade turnoverreached 106.7 billion USD last year, up 13.5 percent compared to 2017. Vietnamexported goods worth 41.26 billion USD, up 16.56 percent, while imports reached65.43 billion USD, up 11.68 percent.
Executive Director of the Vietnam National Garment and Textile Group (Vinatex)Cao Huu Hieu said one of the bright points contributing to the growth of Vietnam’stextile and garment industry was businesses’ efforts to boost exports to theChinese market.
Hieu said Vietnam’s garment and textile export turnover to the Chinese marketincreased by 24 percent from 3.2 billion USD in 2017 to 4.1 billion USD in2018. Yarn was the product most exported to China, making up 48 percent of alltextiles.
However, Hieu said many Vietnamese enterprises, including textile firms, facedifficulties when attempting to export goods to China.
“The production scale of Vietnamese enterprises is relatively small, leading toa limitation on competitiveness of export goods,” Hieu said. “In addition, someenterprises have not actively explored consumption habits, market informationor quality standards and quarantine testing in China.”
Le Hoang Oanh, head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Department ofAsian-African Markets, said the two countries’ border infrastructure had failedto meet the rapidly growing demand of bilateral commodity exchange.
China is the main export market for Vietnam’s agricultural and aquaticproducts.
However, “agricultural and aquatic products, which are allowed to be exportedto China, are not yet abundant,” Oanh said. “The progress of negotiation toopen the market for new products of Vietnam is still slow.”
Oanh added that businesses needed to organise the production of agriculturaland aquatic products on an industrial scale with uniform quality to ensurecompliance with quality standards required to sell goods in China.
“To promote the export of goods to the Chinese market, Vietnamese enterprisesneed to identify China as a key market and should not assume that it is easymarket,” she said. “Businesses need to understand market demand in China todetermine key products and key market areas.” - VNA
VNA
