The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) on April 6 held the first online dialogue with exporters, aiming to provide them with the latest and accurate information about the European Union market, which was Vietnam ’s second largest export market in 2010.

MoIT Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Bien pointed out that the greatest difficulty challenging Vietnamese exporters in the EU market is their failure to keep up with updated information on the market, which has a high degree of demand in term of technical matters.

He said as the big market, the EU offers various opportunities to Vietnamese exporters, especially on the support of the to-be-signed EU-Vietnam Vietnam Free Trade Agreement.

The official urged local businesses to strictly observe Vietnam ’s export procedures and the EU’s import regulations if they wish to explore these opportunities.

In the first two months of this year, Vietnam reaped 2.5 billion USD in export earnings from the EU, a surge of 46 percent over the same period last year, with footwear, apparels, coffee, aquatic products, and wood furniture as key products.

Following this dialogue, the MoIT plans to hold monthly online dialogues for businesses which are eager for exporting their products to Japan , India , the UK , the United Arab Emirates , Cambodia , China and Algeria at the website: www.ttnn.com.vn./.