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Trade promotion activities are being strengthened to expand the market for Vietnamese goods. Photo: Collected

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Thang Hai said that the world economy in the first 6 months of 2023 faced many difficulties and challenges. Many major economies, including our country's important trading partners, have slowed down and even fallen into recession. Vietnam's import and export activities have also been affected and faced many difficulties.

Trade connection programs between suppliers and exporters, and trade promotion organizations in all three regions of the North-Central-South have been successfully organized. Through trade connection programs for supporting enterprises in all regions of the country, there have been thousands of connections, exchanges, and direct transactions with many domestic and international partners.

Vice Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Vo Van Hoan assessed that the trade connection between suppliers, exporters, and trade promotion organizations was a practical solution, promoting enterprises to increase production. promoting product consumption, introducing and promoting typical products with the export potential of localities to international trade promotion agencies, importers, export purchasers, and processors in the country and aboard. This was an important multi-party connection platform, enabling enterprises to grasp the diverse tastes of many markets and access solutions to promote the export of goods directly to foreign distribution networks, helping export goods and products to reach far in the international arena, thereby participating more deeply in the supply chain and higher in the global value chain.

Ms. Le Viet Nga, Deputy Director of the Domestic Market Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade), said that by the end of the year, there would be many stimulus programs to support enterprises. The Ministry of Industry and Trade would continue to implement the market stabilization program nationwide, through these programs, it would boost domestic demand, and support manufacturing enterprises to find output for products, especially modern retail systems such as Aeon, Winmart, Saigon Co.op, Central Retail...

At a recent meeting with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Mr. Olivier Langlet - General Director of Central Retail Group (a large enterprise in the retail industry of Thailand) said that he had been working closely with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam to bring Vietnamese goods into the overseas distribution system. In 2023, Central Retail would focus on participating in two key events, which were the series of events "Connecting the international supply chain" (Viet Nam International Sourcing 2023) held in September in Ho Chi Minh City and the event of Vietnamese goods week in Thailand in August this year.

In particular, agricultural products and food would be the focus areas that Central Retail was actively looking for sustainable partners in Vietnam. Accordingly, typical and strong products of Vietnam, especially new, healthy products, derived from nature, organic farming; products that were managed, traced product quality through blockchain technology; products under the key program, circular economy… would be the products of special interest and search.

As an enterprise that has made great efforts to bring products to appear on domestic and foreign supermarket shelves, Minh Trung Group Joint Stock Company has gradually improved and affirmed product quality. Nguyen Dac Trung, Deputy General Director of Minh Trung Vietnam Group Joint Stock Company, said that in addition to stable product distribution at supermarkets and domestic distribution agents, the company also aimed to develop products in international markets. However, the difficulty when entering these markets, especially in Europe and Japan, was to overcome the strict standards of the market.

For Minh Trung's products, in order to enter the European market, especially Europe's leading food distribution chain, Minh Trung must also prove that they met the criteria of import products in these markets. especially green criteria, reducing the use of plastic. Before manufacturing the product, it must first build a qualified factory, which was accepted by an international testing unit.

Or for the wood industry, trade promotion is an important solution to help revive the export turnover of wood and wood products after decreasing by nearly 30% in the first half of the year. According to Dr. Le Quoc Phuong, former Deputy Director of the Centre for Industry and Trade Information, in the current international integration process, the role of the market was very important. But our market had not diversified yet. Processed wood products were present in 140 countries and territories, but focusing on 5 main markets including the US, China, Japan, Korea, and the EU with about 90% of total wood export turnover. The remaining 10% was scattered with very small export volumes in other markets.

Therefore, when these 5 markets faced difficulties, the overall export would decrease. Therefore, the role of market diversification was very important. To diversify, we must promote trade promotion into new and potential markets such as New Zealand, Australia... These were very important markets in the current context.

According to Mr. Le Quoc Phuong, in trade promotion activities, in addition to solutions focusing on key commodities that had or would have development potential and high export value; focusing on trade promotion on potential markets that had not been exploited much such as the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe; As well as focusing on large customers such as corporations and large importers, it was necessary to provide information and advice to enterprises, so that small and medium enterprises could understand clearly. In addition, promoting online commerce was a cheap method and many enterprises could do it.