Ministry of Industry and Trade "motivates" commodity export

Vietnam's commodity export is growing positively, but it is vulnerable to external factors. Photo: Hong Nu.

Renovation of coordination mechanism

Following positive results in 2017, in the first month of 2018, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the export turnover is estimated at 19 billion USD, up 33% over the same period last year. Of which, the export turnover of the 100% domestic sector was estimated at 5.41 billion USD, increase by 31.6%; and the foreign-invested sector, including crude oil, gained 13.6 billion USD, up 33.7%.

Positive export growth happens at the beginning of the year, but according to many experts, looking carefully at the "picture" of Vietnam import-export in 2018 as well as in the future, there are still some shortcomings to overcome quickly to reach sustainable and effective development.

The shortcomings include: Export growth is susceptible to external factors such as increasing trade barriers, technical barriers of importing countries. The structure of commodity export has shifted sharply to manufacturing and processing goods, but still heavily dependent on FDI enterprises. The rate of import of raw materials is still large, making export goods dependent on the foreign supply markets. Besides, although the quality of agricultural and aquatic products has been improved, but it is uneven. The agro-export products also face many difficulties in accessing markets with high requirements on food quality and safety. The competitiveness of export goods has been slowly improved, and most of export items have not built their own brands ...

From the point of view of problem awareness in Vietnam's export and import activities, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Minister of Industry and Trade – Mr. Tran Tuan Anh said: Together with specific solutions for economic development, to attract investment for domestic production development of the Government and other ministries, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will effectively implement three main directions: developing production and creating good quality for commodity export; developing market, opening the market for export and well organizing export activities, linking production-processing-export chain.

"The Ministry of Industry and Trade determines to focus strongly on innovation, improving the efficiency of coordination mechanisms with other ministries, sectors, localities and business associations to create more comprehensive coordination in dealing with problems arising in international trade such as overcoming trade barriers, animal and plant quarantine, anti-subsidy issues, anti-dumping issues from foreign countries to export goods of Vietnam. At the same time, the Ministry will also focus on fundamentally changing the trade promotion and market expansion for Vietnam's export goods", Mr. Tran Tuan Anh stated.

To accompany the business

In fact, in addition to the three main orientations mentioned above, in order to enhance competitiveness and promote export in 2018, Minister Tran Tuan Anh affirmed that the Ministry of Industry and Trade would stress on 7 groups of solutions. They are: focusing on institutional reform, perfecting the legal corridor and reforming the state management apparatus, improving the business investment environment to mobilize resources for production; Focusing on creating a good source of goods for production to raise the added value, producing products meeting the standards of quality and food safety and meeting the import market demands; Strengthening the research, forecasting and warning of trade remedies applied to Vietnam's export goods, promptly directing specific and drastic measures to solve difficulties for enterprises, promoting production, export and developing market; Studying solutions and measures to develop export, import for every important market; Seeking the possibility of expanding new potential export markets and

at the same time consolidating and expanding the market share of Vietnamese goods in the traditional markets and the market containing partners of free trade agreements (FTA); Strengthening measures to remove barriers and create conditions for export commodities, especially agricultural and aquatic products, to penetrate into new markets; Accelerating the negotiation, conclusion and approval of free trade agreements between Vietnam and other countries; Improving the management and development of the domestic market, fighting against smuggling, counterfeit goods, imitation goods and trade frauds. "The Ministry of Industry and Trade will always accompany and listen to the opinions and feedback of enterprises on policy issues to tackle difficulties and develop the export market for goods together," stated Mr. Tran Tuan Anh.

As we can see through activities of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the groups of solutions to promote the export from the Ministry are “motivated” from the beginning of the year and stated in the monthly plan. Typically, in February, the solution proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade was to implement effectively and comprehensively the effective FTAs, the commitments in the WTO and the ASEAN Economic Community; to actively prepare for effective implementation of new generation FTAs; to intensify research on international economic integration in the policy integration process; to focus on new issues such as the impact of participation in new generation FTAs, the impact trends in regional and global cooperation frameworks such as ASEAN, APEC, ASEM, WTO; to seek and expand the market for Vietnam goods and services in order to increase export. For huge enterprises, the Ministry also gives specific guidance. Typically, the Ministry of Industry and Trade requested that, in February, the Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited and the North East Corporation would direct the coal processing and trading companies to focus on the way of coal consumption to meet the maximum demand for domestic consumption and to export various domestic types of coal which have not had the demand to use yet to maximally reduce the amount of inventory.

Regarding the story of promoting the commodity export, related to the fact that Vietnam export activities are still heavily dependent on FDI enterprises, Mr. Tran Thanh Hai, deputy head of the Import-Export Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade) state that: FDI is an organic component of the economy. Resolving concerns is not to try to limit or reduce the activities of FDI enterprises but to actively support domestic enterprises in developing quickly, effectively to occupy a higher proportion of export in comparison with the general export structure of the country. Mr. Hai also affirmed that in the coming time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will advise and facilitate more connections between domestic and foreign enterprises, especially in the field of technology transfer, thereby raising the competitiveness for enterprises and increasing export turnover.