Acting General Director of the Vietnam Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank) Nguyen Van Thang has attended the 8th annual meeting of financial institutions of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico from July 21-22.

The meeting reviewed and evaluated issues in activities of member organisations from the previous annual meeting, exchanged views on major issues the organisations are facing such as the role of financial institutions in micro-financial sponsorship and financial support activities for small and super-small enterprises, the guarantee programme for SMEs’ development and indications to assess activities of support programmes.

The Vietnamese representative delivered a speech at the meeting, in which he stressed that as a financial institution serving business, organisations, individuals in the economy, his bank has held programmes to support and promote Vietnam’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Within the meeting’s framework, Thang and Taro Morita from the Japan Financial Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) including the exchange of information on SME support programme, coordination to support Japanese enterprises to penetrate into Vietnam .

The next meeting is scheduled to take place in the Philippines in 2012./.