Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam and Thailandagreed on some measures to remove difficulties for businesses in carrying outtrade activities at the third meeting of their joint trade committee in Hanoion August 3.

Vietnam’s Minister of Industry and Trade TranTuan Anh and Thailand’s Minister of Commerce Sontirat Sontijirawong co-chairedthe event.

The two sides discussed specific collaborationplans to raise two-way trade to 20 billion USD in 2020, and work for morebalance in bilateral trade.

Minister Tuan Anh suggested Thailand create morefavourable conditions for Vietnamese firms to export farm produce and food tothe market as well as speed up procedures to grant licences allowing the importof several kinds of Vietnamese fruits.

He also urged Thailand to remove the procedureof licensing the export of milk and dairy products from Thailand to Vietnam,reduce and eliminate trade protection measures against Vietnamese iron andsteel products.

The minister called on the two sides to buildcoordination regulations to provide early warnings about the possibility ofconducting trade remedies investigations on the other country’s exportproducts.

Tuan Anh also said the two countries shouldenhance coordination in multilateral cooperation frameworks.

Also at the conference, the two sides looked atsome issues of Thailand’s concerns such as the import of made-in-Thailand automobilesinto Vietnam and Vietnam’s regulations on the rights of distributing medicinesand medicine materials, the transport, storage and marketing of medicines inthe market.

Solutions toenhance cooperation in other fields such as agriculture, transport, customs,banking, investment, employment, intellectual property, and regional andsub-regional cooperation were also on the agenda.

Thailand is currently the biggest trade partnerof Vietnam in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with two-waytrade increasing to 15.3 billion USD in 2017 from 11.5 billion USD in 2015, anannual growth of 15.5 percent.

Meanwhile,Vietnam is the second biggest trade partner of Thailand in ASEAN, followingMalaysia.

In the first six months of 2018, the bilateraltrade reached nearly 8 billion USD, a year-on-year rise of 14.7 percent.Vietnam exported over 2.7 billion USD worth of goods to Thailand inJanuary-June, up 22.7 percent against the same period last year.-VNA