Chargé d’affaires at the Vietnamese Embassyin Cambodia Nguyen Trac Toan said that bilateral trade reached over 3.1 billionUSD in the first 10 months of 2017, up 31.5 percent year-on-year. The figure isforecast to hit 3.5 billion USD this year.
Vietnam is currently running 196 investmentprojects in Cambodia with the registered capital of 2.94 billion USD, making itamong the five biggest investors in the country.
For years, Vietnam has also ranked first interms of the number of tourists to Cambodia with nearly 1 million arrivals eachyear, Toan added.
He believed that this forum would help thetwo countries fully tap their cooperation potential through the provision ofthe latest information about trade and investment policies and incentives forboth sides’ enterprises.
It was also a chance for participatingenterprises to meet, share experience and make proposals to authorisedagencies, he said.
Ho Sivyong, Director of the Export-ImportDepartment under the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce, affirmed that Cambodiastill maintains its open investment policy that allows operations offoreign-invested businesses and is carrying out intensive reforms to facilitateinvestment and business activities in the country.
Vietnamese companies will surely benefitfrom these reforms, he emphasised.
At the forum, representatives fromVietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade and Ministry of Planning andInvestment shared that the Government is implementing measures synchronously topush up investment cooperation between the two countries, including simplifyingadministrative procedures, negotiating and signing treaties and agreements withCambodia, and upgrading roads linking to the neighbour.
Participating enterprises suggested bothsides cooperate closely in investment promotion activities and state managementover investment activities, regularly hold dialogues between Vietnamesebusinesses and the two countries’ competent offices to timely solvedifficulties.
They also urged the signing of an agreementon double taxation avoidance, together with improvement in administrativeprocedure reforms.-VNA