Hanoi (VNA) - Hanoi has selectedseveral locations for the introduction and sale of goods under the “OneCommune, One Product” (OCOP) programme, and is planning to increase the numberof such showrooms in the time to come to make local goods more popular amongdomestic consumers and foreign visitors.

According to the city’s coordinating office for thenew-style countryside building programme, Hanoi will boost local districts andtowns’ implementation of the OCOP programme and will assess and seek themunicipal People’s Committee’s recognition of more than 700 OCOP products ratedat least three stars by the end of this year.

In 2019, 301 products from 18 district-level localitiesin Hanoi were given three stars or higher in the OCOP programme. They includedsix given five stars and proposed to be named national OCOP products, 207 givenfour stars, and 88 others given three stars.

Based on this, Hanoi is looking to assess andrate about 800 - 1,000 products this year, with at least 500 to reach themunicipal level (three or four stars) and 100 the national level (five stars).

The city’s Department of Industry and Tradesurveyed locations for showcasing and selling local OCOP products, such asshops at train stations, Noi Bai International Airport, bus terminals, restareas along expressways and national highways, shopping malls, supermarkets,markets, tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels, traditional craft villages,and exhibition venues.

Deputy Director of the department, Tran ThiPhuong Lan, said five sites were selected: the store of the Vun Art Cooperativeand the Trieu Van Mao silk shop in Van Phuc ward, the Xuan Cuong Handicraftstore at the Ngo Thi Nham auction site, the safe vegetable store at Ha DongMarket, and the OCOP showroom at the department’s industrial developmentcentre.

She noted that goods displayed are all rated atleast three stars, like silk, vegetables, and handicrafts, which are recognisedas typical rural industrial products at the municipal and regional levels.

Via these sites, outstanding rural industrialproducts from Hanoi will have access to more consumers, providing a basis forcooperatives, businesses, producers, and farmers to continue improving goods’quality and design to meet consumers’ increasing demand, Lan said, adding thatthe Department of Industry and Trade will also work with other cities and provincesnationwide to showcase their OCOP products at those showrooms.

The local coordinating office for the new-stylecountryside building programme will provide more training to personnel in theOCOP programme and upgrade the origin tracing system for OCOP products, sheadded.

Hanoi is expected to open 25 showrooms of OCOPproducts this year and raise the total to 60-70 in 2021.

The OCOP was initiated by the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development in 2008, based on Japan’s “One Village, OneProduct” and Thailand’s “One Town, One Product” programmes. It is an economicdevelopment programme for rural areas and focuses on increasing internal powerand values, and is also to help with the national target programme on new-stylerural area building.

The classifications of goods and servicesdefined in the programme include food (fresh and processed farm produce);beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic); medicinal herbs (products made fromherbal plants); fabric and textiles (products made from cotton and yarn);souvenirs, furniture, and decorations (products made from wood, fibres, rattan,metal, and ceramics); and rural tourism services and sales (services forsightseeing, tourism, study, and research).

The overall objective of the programme is todevelop stable and sustainable forms of production for organisations andbusinesses, with priority given to developing cooperatives and small- andmedium-sized enterprises, towards producing traditional products and improvingservices with high competitiveness on the domestic and international markets,thus promoting the rural economy and national agriculture industrialisation andmodernisation./.