Trade exchange held to connect Japanese, Vietnamese firms
Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam
Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade in
collaboration with the Vietnam Trade Office in Japan on December 23 organised a trade exchange
to connect businesses of Vietnam and Japan in the field of food processing.
According to Le Hoang Tai,
deputy head of Vietrade said given the complicated development of COVID-19, the
exchange, held virtually, will create opportunities for businesses of the two
countries to strengthen business cooperation and recovery in the new situation.
They will learn more about each other’s needs and capabilities, reaching an agreement
on collaboration development between enterprises of the two countries,
contributing to enhancing the Vietnam-Japan bilateral relationship.
Ta Duc Minh, Trade Consular
at the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan said with a population of more than 125
million people, Japan is a large consumption market for agricultural, aquatic
and food products.
Vietnam is considered to have
strengths in the above-mentioned products and has good supply capacity for the
Japanese market. Moreover, the number of people from Asian countries living and
working in Japan is also up to 10 million, in which, the number of Vietnamese
people increased rapidly with nearly 500,000 people in 2020. Therefore,
agricultural products imported from Vietnam have been warmly received by
Japanese, Vietnamese and people of other Asian countries, he said.
It showed that there still
have a lot of potential for Vietnamese agricultural products to export to Japan
in the future, Minh said.
Addressing the event, Keisuke
Kobayashi, deputy director-general at Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO),
said Vietnam and Japan have been each other's important trading partners for
many years. The two countries have maintained a stable import-export
relationship in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The total import-export
turnover between Vietnam and Japan reached 38.4 billion USD in the first 11
months of this year, up 7 percent over the same period last year. Notably, Japanese
investment capital into Vietnam increased by 54 percent against last year’s
figure.
The fact that the two
countries are members of many free trade agreements including the Vietnam-Japan
Economic Partnership Agreement (VJEPA), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement
for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Regional Economic Partnership
Agreement (RCEP), creates many opportunities to expand trade cooperation,
especially participating in the regional and world’s supply chain.
According to a representative
of Kome Co.Ltd - a wholesaler and supplier of Vietnamese food in Japan, the Northeast country is facing the problem like other developed
countries. That is population decline and ageing.
Due to the lack of labour
force, Japanese manufacturers tend to look for factories in foreign countries
like Vietnam to meet the domestic market. This is also an opportunity for
Vietnamese agro-fishery enterprises to seek cooperation, the representative said. However, he suggested that Vietnamese
firms work closely with importers to have full information on additives or
ingredients that are used to ensure eligibility before exporting, adding that there
were differences between Vietnamese and Japanese markets in terms of standard./.