Trade promotion remains a little money “chorus”

The domestic trading activities facilitate to the domestic enterprises in contact with the foreign importers. Photo: Phan Thu.

Due to little money, many feasible projects have not been implemented

Although over 100 containers of the Cung Dinh noodles, soy sauce, fish sauce, soup powder... were exported to the Chinese market, Mr. Phan The Anh, the market development specialist, the Food Chau A Technology Joint Stock Company still reflected that information on the Chinese market was very little and ineffective. “The partners of the company are due to search through the e-commerce channel, it is difficult to verify information, even more risky in belief because of no condition to find out the reality,” he said.

Sharing the fear of lack of information, Mr. Henry Hoang, Chairman of the Board of Directors, the Wine and Natural Products Joint Stock Company shared when beginning to enter the Chinese market, due to not understanding the Chinese laws, models, labels of the product were not suitable, so they were not cleared. In 2016, this company had to change the design of models twice times and it made great damage each time, the goods must be stored at the port of China to wait for printing and change the new packaging.

Lack of market information was a problem that many businesses encountered, especially the markets were considered as the new ones for businesses. However, with limited human and financial resources - the biggest "obstacle" that the agency is assigned carried out the trade promotion, what the company said is unavoidable.

Asked "What are the difficulties that the promotion agency encounters?", Mr. Bui Huy Son, Director of the Trade Promotion Department (the Ministry of Industry and Trade), showed three limitations in the trade promotion. Firstly, human resources for trade promotion should be further improved in quantity and quality. Second, the investment for trade promotion activities has been still limited compared to other countries in the region and the world. For example, the expense for Vietnam's current trade promotion program in addition to the export turnover was only 0.003% higher than the world average of 0.11%. As a percentage, this figure was equivalent to 1/30 the average of countries in the world, was equal to 1/10 compared to Thailand. “In fact, many projects are good, feasible and practical to serve directly in boosting export but not enough money for implementation”, Mr. Son said.

The third shown by Mr. Son was a shortage of infrastructure for the trade promotion. This affected the scale and the quality of the trade promotion activities, especially international activities. On the other hand, the capacity of implementing trade promotion activities of the enterprises was is limited in general, especially for the small and medium enterprises. Many enterprises have lacked the long-term orientation and the development determination with a strategic vision. Mr. Son emphasized: “Given the limited financial and human resources, with the current application way, we are satisfying a short-term task but have not set up a solid foundation for the long-term strategic goals”.

There are changes but not much improvement

Remembered, in the meeting in early 2017 with the Trade Promotion Department, Mr. Tran Quoc Khanh, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade requested strictly the Trade Promotion Department had to change the thinking “being the partner, not being the manager of business”, so the trade promotion activities would be more effective. Accordingly, the trade promotion agency would be one that provides the enterprise's skills of earning money, and promotion, not provide them cash.

With this direction, Mr. Son said that the Vietnam Trade Promotion Department was implementing actively strong moves with specific activities to enhance the implementation effectiveness of the national trade promotion program, the national branding program; Apply the information technology in trade promotion activities, supply the market information, connect the enterprises, assist the enterprises in enhancing product design capacity to increase added value.

Specifically, in addition to continuing to focus on the traditional methods such as organizing fairs, exhibitions, foreign market survey activities combined with trade links, the Trade Promotion Department strengthened the international trade promotion activities even in Vietnam, it is possible for the domestic enterprises interact with the foreign importers, especially the small and medium enterprises which have not had enough resources to participate directly in trade promotion activities in foreign countries; step up large-scale activities orienting and directing the market to create conditions for the units and the enterprises to be familiar with the market step by step, take initiative gradually in implementing trade promotion activities directly.

In addition, the Trade Promotion Department focused on enhancing and specializing the trade promotion activities for companies before, during and after participating in the trade promotion programs at home and abroad, at the same time, taking advantage of technical and financial assistance of the foreign trade promotion organizations to improve the deployment effectiveness of the trade promotion activities such as supporting the design consultants, displaying products at the Vietnamese department at the domestic and foreign events, promoting to broadcast the trade promotion activities in the trade promotion channels of the international organizations, using the trade information data and the import business data, providing training on trade promotion resources, developing the export products… Parallel with the innovation of operating mode, the Trade Promotion Department also implemented the innovation of financial mobilization mechanisms such as implementing the activities using the socialization resource to mobilize a variety of the organizations, the economic sectors involved the trade promotion.

It can be seen that a number of changes listed by the Vietnam Trade Promotion Department show the acquirement but in practice, the change is still slow when the upward activities with the seminars and conferences have held big numbers. The information presented at these seminars and conferences has not hit the demand of the enterprises. Probably, the trade promotion is looking forward to more breakthroughs, looking forward to more enthusiastic and creative people.