Enterprises in southern Dong Nai province are preparing for intensive international integration as the ASEAN Community forms this year.

Once the common community is established, most tariff and non-tariff barriers will be eliminated, opening opportunities for production and business development as well as facilitating the circulation of goods among the ASEAN member states.

However, the increased opportunities are coupled with increased competition in product price and quality, said Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Dinh Quoc Thai.

Dong Nai is now home to around 20,000 enterprises. To anticipate opportunities and surmount challenges posed by the integration process, many have actively invested in expanding production scales and applied new technologies in business and production management.

The Vietnamese-French cattle feed JSC Proconco recently invested 200 billion USD (9.4 million USD) to build an additional factory with a capacity of 150,000 tonnes of cattle feed annually, while the Southern Rubber Industry JSC Casumina is currently constructing a 160 million USD tyre factory. The Vietnam National Garment and Textile Group also invested 23 million USD in a yarn factory in the locality.

This year, the province continues to implement policies supporting enterprises in administrative procedure reform, trade promotion, and technological innovation.

The locality has also intensified its agricultural restructuring to increase its currently low value. Dong Nai boasts huge potential for agricultural development with an area of over 4,600 square kilometres in farming land, a mild climate and convenient transport.

Recently, Dong Nai signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation and investment with Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, under which the ministry will create favourable conditions to transfer advanced technologies in agriculture to the province.

According to Director of the provincial Department of Science and Technology Pham Van Sang, Dong Nai established a biotechnology application centre to learn from Japan’s advanced technologies and determine ways to apply them to local production. To date, the centre has produced 42 types of vegetable seeds and provided 45 tonnes of the vegetable seeds to farmers.-VNA