Hanoi (VNA) – Prime Minister NguyenXuan Phuc has urged trade counsellors to proactively assist domestic businessesby providing information about foreign markets, promoting trade and investmentactivities, and increasing sale of Vietnamese products abroad.

He made the request at the Commercial CounsellorsConference in Hanoi on February 7, which saw the presence of Vietnamesecounsellors at 57 Trade Offices and seven of their branches abroad along withrepresentatives from ministries and enterprises.

The country’s import-export turnover reached 425billion USD in 2017, a positive outcome which was significantly contributed bythe Vietnamese Trade Offices abroad, the PM said, adding that Vietnam has 21 productswith over one-billion-USD export turnover and many others worth tens ofbillions of USD.

The Government is setting major export turnovertargets for key commodities such as rice, shrimp, medicine, vegetables andfruits; hence, it wants to hear proposals of trade counsellors to promote theexport of products, Phuc said.

Highlighting market seeking as a difficulty, hesaid “If we could find good markets accepting Vietnamese goods and the twosides share mutual benefits, domestic businesses are able to expand production.”

The Trade Offices will play a crucial role infinding new markets for exports, he added.

The PM asked the Ministry of Industry and Tradeto give timely rewards to Trade Offices and commercial counsellors who activelycontribute to promoting exports of staples such as shrimp, mango, dragon fruit,lychee, star apple, longan and chicken to the Asian market.

In the current stage of socio-economicdevelopment, economic diplomacy needs due attention so the Trade Offices musthave an important role in Vietnamese embassies abroad.

He requested trade counsellors to do theirutmost to help realise the country’s trade turnover of 500 billion USD in 2018.

The counsellors should take the success of businessesas measurement of their operational efficiency.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade,the Trade Offices abroad carried out over 500 trade promotion activities in2016-2017 to help domestic and foreign companies update regulations on import-exportand trade connectivity.

They also actively worked with the Department ofTrade Defence under the Ministry of Industry and Trade to deal with tradedefence measures such as anti-dumping and anti-subsidy applied by countriesimporting Vietnamese goods. 

The Trade Offices provided information andhandled 12 anti-dumping cases in 2016 and 13 others in 2017.-VNA