Large markets such as Asia, the US and the EU, which have substantial, long-term and stable import demands, are always targets of Vietnamese exporters.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), in the first quarter of this year, Asia was Vietnam ’s largest export market with an export turnover of nearly 10 billion USD, up 38 percent year-on-year. The country’s exports to China and Japan alone reached 4.3 billion USD and 2 billion USD, respectively.

America came next with 4.2 billion USD, a rise of 25.2 percent over the same period last year. It was followed by the EU with 4 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 51 percent. It was noteworthy that Vietnam ’s exports to several EU markets such as Poland , Cyprus and Austria enjoyed two- to four-time growths.

Between now and the year-end, Vietnam’s exports will face more difficulties due to the impacts of public debt crises in some European countries as well as high inflation and prices in many nations, said trade experts.

Therefore, many businesses have proactively built strategies to access large export markets, including Japan , to make the best use of preferences from the Vietnam-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, and actively expanded activities to new markets in the Middle East and South Africa .

The MoIT has recently approved a project to strengthen exports to the Latin American market in the 2011-2015 period and by 2020. The project will not only help businesses expand their markets but also support changes in export commodity structure in the direction of focusing on exporting industrial products and consumer goods, which face less competitions in this area./.