Dao Huu Huyen, chairman of the board of theDuc Giang Chemicals Group Joint Stock Company, told Thanh Nien newspaper thatmany companies have good technologies and products but still find it difficultto be a part of international supply chains.
Korean and Japanese companies mostly buy parts only from other Korean andJapanese businesses, and only buy raw materials from his company, he said.
Tran Tuan Anh, chairman of the board of 19-8 Mechanical Joint Stock Company,also complained about how difficult it is for his company to enter the supplychains of multinational businesses despite its high-quality goods.
Its truck spring and leaf spring products have quality certification from theGerman Institute for Standardisation and are exported to Europe, but itstruggles to find truck manufacturers in Vietnam to supply its products, hesaid.
At a conference in April on entering supply chains, Ron Ashkin, projectdirector of the United States Agency for International Development's linkagesfor small and medium enterprises project, said the low rate of local componentsused by small and medium-sized firms is the reason why their participation inglobal value chains is low.
An expert with many years of experience working with multinational companiestold Thanh Nien that the difficulty in joining large production chains ispartly due to the fact that the chains have existed for long and new supplierswould have to be exceptional to break into them. Nevertheless, it is the marketthat makes this decision, the expert said.
A Truong Hai Auto Corporation executive said the deciding factor remains thecapability of businesses, adding they should start out with small, easy partsthey are good at before moving on to higher-value parts.
At the April conference, Truong Thi Chi Binh, deputy chairwoman and generalsecretary of the Vietnam Association for Supporting Industries, urgedmanufacturing businesses to improve their international competitiveness byobtaining quality certification and improving their management and networking.-VNS/VNA