Cuba is seeking retail investments and creating conducive conditions for them, and Saigon Co.op should open a supermarket in the country and trade with it, a visiting senior Cuban official has said.

Roberto Morales Ojeda, Politburo member and permanent member of the Secretariat of Cuba’s Communist Party Central Committee, who is leading a high-level delegation to Viet Nam, was visiting Saigon Co.op and its Co.opXtra Tan Phong in HCM City’s District 7 earlier this week.

Receiving the delegation were Le Truong Son, deputy general director of Saigon Co.op, and other executives.

A Saigon Co.op executive briefed the delegation about its operating model as a typical collective and a leading consumer retailer that owns Co.opmart supermarkets, Co.op Xtra hypermarkets, Co.op Food and Co.op Smile convenience stores, Singapore-styled convenience store chain Cheers, and Sense City shopping mall.

Ojeda expressed a desire for co-operation with Saigon Co.op in future.

At a meeting with HCM City’s leaders on the same day, he said: “While visiting a Co.opXtra supermarket, we saw 95 per cent of the goods there were Vietnamese products. Our country is striving to achieve this model. We see it as a role model to overcome the current difficulties.” — VNS