This is the affirmation by Dr Doan Duy Khuong, Vice President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) at his meeting with Madame Ankita Gupta, Consulting Manager of Eden Strategy Institute, Singapore on July 2, 2014 at VCCI Head Office in Hanoi. A number of environmental and water treatment companies attended the meeting.
Dr Khuong said Vietnam – Singapore bilateral trade relations have continuously expanded in the face of global economic downturn in recent years. Singapore attaches great importance to developing relations with Vietnam and the latter has become a major market of the former in Southeast Asia. Especially, the Vietnam Business Forum 2014 (VSBF 2014), organised in Ho Chi Minh City in June, deepened the bilateral relations in various fields. This event also aimed to promote business and accelerate international economic integration when ASEAN member countries are striving for the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015.
Ankita Gupta said Eden Strategy Institute wishes to study on every ASEAN country. On this visit to Vietnam, the institute wanted to meet businesses and government agencies to understand more about the Vietnamese business environment as well as difficulties against enterprises. Eden is specially interested in studying business start-ups and innovative tech companies to collect information for the Singapore-based research institute, connect multinational corporations in Singapore to seek business cooperation opportunities and seek funding from the Singapore government to create better new products for consumers.
Answering questions about current operation situations of enterprises and investment difficulties in Vietnam, Dr Khuong said Vietnam has a lot of businesses but up to 98 percent are small and medium. Capital is always their biggest difficulty. He explained that small and medium-sized businesses must have security assets to borrow money. Sometimes, banks do not look at the quality and feasibility of investment projects but their security assets when they consider lending. This is one of limitations and difficulties of Vietnamese businesses.
VCCI and Eden focused on discussing banking, health and education issues. The two sides underlined challenges in banking investment in Vietnam when Vietnamese people prefer using cash and keeping money at home. Dr Khuong attributed this to low incomes of Vietnamese people and shortcomings and flaws of the banking system. Banking crimes tend to increase.
To support foreign businesses in general and Singapore’s businesses in particular doing business in Vietnam and strengthen cooperation of Vietnamese businesses with Singaporean multinational firms, Dr Khuong said VCCI, as a leading trade, investment and business promotion and support agency representative of Vietnamese and foreign companies, has carried out a lot of activities in support of all economic sectors to improve competitiveness, expand export and import markets, deployed trade and investment promotion programmes in various fields like training, information provision, business matching, market survey and exhibition in Vietnam and foreign nations. In the coming time, VCCI will actively support businesses. He also asked Eden to send any questions or inform VCCI any problems it faces and VCCI will provide its best support and be a bridge connecting companies of both countries.
Ms Ankita Gupta was also interested to learn about business-doing process, business opening, investment and customs in Vietnam, especially fundraising issues of enterprises.
Ha Vu
Đăng ký: VietNam News
