HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Vu Thi Thanh Hanh, general manager ofLearth Vietnam Co Ltd, said sales of her company’s VietJoy leaf tea productswere very good three months after they entered the Singaporean market.  

There were seven kinds of leaf tea products,moringa leaf tea, guava leaf tea, mulberry leaf tea, soursop leaf tea, roselleflower tea, noni fruit tea, and graviola leaf tea, which are made ofall-natural ingredients with no preservatives, colourants or additives added,she said.

“After three months, we realised thatSingaporean customers are very fond of our soursop leaf tea, moringa leaf tea,guava leaf tea and mulberry leaf tea. We had sold 30,000 boxes of tea.”

Nguyen Anh Duc, deputy general director of theSaigon Co.op, the leading Vietnamese retailer, said his cooperative exported200 containers of goods annually to Singapore, including basa fishfillet, shrimp, sweet potato, green-skin pomelo, coconut and others to sell atits Singaporean partner NTUC FairPrice’s stores.

“The export has been increasing by 20 percent ayear and is expected to top 2 million USD this year.”

Vietnamese goods ranked fourth amongAsia-Pacific products sold by NTUC FairPrice, which accounted for 56-60 percentof supermarket sales in Singapore, he said.

Seah Kian Peng, CEO of NTUC FairPrice, said:“Vietnamese products have grown in popularity and become a staple in manySingaporean households. Whether it is Vietnamese rice, which now comprises morethan one-fifth of all the rice sold here at FairPrice, fresh produce, frozenseafood or even laundry aids and detergent, we have seen an increasedacceptance and demand for Vietnamese products.”

FairPrice now offers about 650 Vietnameseproducts in over 40 product categories, a 17 percent increase from 2015, hesaid.

Steven Ang, head of purchase at Saigon Co-opFairPrice Limited Liability Company, a joint venture between Saigon Co-op andNTUC FairPrice, said: “The quality of Vietnamese products overall is very good.For example, the chiku [sapodilla] that we are selling now, the Vietnamese oneis preferred in comparison to the one from Malaysia, and the price is also verycompetitive.”

Vietnam has a lot of healthy products such asorganic rice and phở, he said.

“We continue to look for more suppliers ... tobring new products from Vietnam to Singapore.”

Duc from the Saigon Co.op said: “Singaporeanconsumers are particularly fond of Vietnamese fresh produce and processed foodssuch as coffee and cashew nuts. Singaporeans are changing from potato to sweetpotato, so Saigon Co.op has promoted the export of sweet potatoes to Singaporevia the FairPrice system.”

Singaporean consumers are also fond ofVietnamese mango and dragon fruit, he said.

"The prices of Vietnamese goods are verycompetitive compared to goods imported from countries outside the ASEAN regionsold in Singapore because the ASEAN countries have free trade agreementstogether.

“But we have faced intense competition fromcompanies in the region, which requires Vietnamese enterprises to make moreefforts to improve product quality and reduce costs to improvecompetitiveness.”

In the past, Vietnamese products were far behindthe goods from other countries in the region, but now the gap is narrowing, hesaid.

However, Vietnamese manufacturers still have alot of work to do to establish Vietnamese brands in the world market, andinvest more in product packaging and models, he said.

“Foreign buyers require standardisation,uniformity in quality, weight and specifications,” he said.

Multilateral and bilateral free trade agreementsare creating an excellent opportunity for Vietnamese goods to penetrate theworld market, he said.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade,Singapore is among Vietnam’s major trade partners, with bilateral trade goingup from 7.1 billion USD in 2016 to 8.3 billion USD last year.-VNS/VNA