HCM City (VNA) - Canada offers substantial potentialto Vietnamese wood and wooden furniture exporters, experts told aVietnam-Canada trade exchange held online on September 30.

According to Nguyen Chanh Phuong, Vice Chairman andGeneral Secretary of the Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of Ho ChiMinh City (HAWA), Canada has long been a strategic market for Vietnam in NorthAmerica.

Despite the impact of COVID-19, exports to Canada havestill grown this year, contributing to the targeted 12 billion USD worth of woodand wooden product exports for the year being reached.

Pham Cao Phong, Vietnamese Ambassador to Canada, said thetwo countries have shared a sound comprehensive partnership since 2017. Vietnamis now Canada’s largest trade partner in ASEAN and fifth-largest in Asia.

Two-way trade stood at 6.2 billion USD last year, up23 percent against 2018. The figure rose 0.1 percent in the first half of thisyear despite the pandemic, he said.

Vietnamese exporters of wood and wooden furnitureenjoy significant advantages in tax rates in Canada, which imports about 15billion USD worth of wooden products each year.

Canada is also a gateway for Vietnamese wood andwooden products to enter elsewhere in North America, Phong added.

However, the ambassador also pointed out that exportvolumes of Vietnamese wooden furniture to Canada account for only 2.5 percentof Vietnam’s total and only 1.6 percent of Canada’s total import value of such products.

He recommended exporters be more active in exploringmarket information and seeking partners, thus penetrating deeper into the woodsupply chain in Canada.

Jacques Nadeaus, a trade expert from the World Foodand Agriculture Organisation, said demand for wooden furniture in Canada isforecast to continue to rise, especially in 2021.

Instead of self-supplying 80 percent of its woodenfurniture, as in the past, Canada now imports 55 percent.

He also said that COVID-19 boosted online sales of theseproducts, with growth up from 6.6 percent in 2019 to 16.4 percent in the first halfof 2020. Annual growth is tipped to reach 30 percent.

Vietnamese firms, he recommended, should keep in regularcontact with customers while exploring demand among importers and developingproducts based on seasonal trends in Canada.

Businesses should also exploit the efficiency ofonline exhibitions developed by HAWA to approach and link directly with potentialcustomers, he said./.