A number of businesses from Rome and Lazio in Italy gathered at a seminar in Italy to explore the investment opportunities and seek out trading partners in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations.

Speaking at the event, the Vice President of the Rome Association of Industrialists and Enterprises (UIR) Alessandro Caltagirone said that the recovery in the Southeast Asian economies has created an ideal chance for Italian businesses to penetrate this region.

Statistics provided by the European Union’s Statistics Office (Eurostat) revealed that the value of Rome ’s exports to Southeast Asia rose by 28.5 percent and to Vietnam alone by 28.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

However, Caltagirone said that despite the large potential in Vietnam ’s market, Italian businesses have not been very active in their investments and face tough competition from foreign rivals.

The UIR’s leaders noted that there remains many shortcomings in Vietnamese-Italian trade cooperation due to both subjective and objective reasons.

The President of the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Southeast Asia , Riccardo Rocca, said that bilateral trade and investment cooperation fail to meet the potential of both countries.

Two-way trade reached a record of 1.21 billion EUR in 2007 but only rose 3 percent in 2008 due to the global economic downturn, he said, adding that Italy ’s exports to Vietnam fell 12.2 percent and its imports from Vietnam went up by 15.6 percent./.