A VinCommerce representative receives the Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards in Taiwan last week. — Photo Courtesy of VinCommerce

VinCommerce General Commercial Service JSC, the owner of VinMart and VinMart+, won the 2019 Asia Responsible Enterprise Award in Taiwan last week to become the first Vietnamese winner of the award.

Given away by Enterprise Asia, a non-governmental organisation for entrepreneurship, the awards recognise and honour deserving Asian businesses for championing sustainable and responsible business practices in six categories: Green Leadership, Investment in People, Health Promotion, Social Empowerment, Corporate Governance, and Responsible Business Leadership.

VinCommerce won in the Social Empowerment category for its “Accompanying, Supporting and Promoting Vietnamese Production” project.

Initiated in 2016, the project is one of its key social responsibility programmes targeting to promote consumption of Vietnamese goods and co-ordinating with relevant agencies to achieve solutions for supporting Vietnamese enterprises.

Through the programme, VinCommerce enabled local SMEs to bring their products into the VinMart & VinMart + retail chains at zero discount and helped them strengthen identification for their products and display their products at the points of sale.

It also counselled hundreds of other domestic companies on technology, management, quality control, marketing, and others to enable them to invest in expansion, improve quality and strengthen competitiveness.

So far the programme has supported more than 250 Vietnamese SMEs, helping them increase sales by 20-25 per cent.

According to the award organisers, this year over 200 submissions from 16 countries and territories were received.

A total of 64 projects and business leaders were chosen for the awards.

VinCommerce, a subsidiary of Vingroup, has the largest supermarket system in the country with over 111 VinMart supermarkets and 1,900 VinMart+ convenience stores. — VNS