Trade promotion programmes helped generate more than US$583 million in contract value and transactions in 2017, according to the Viet Nam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade).

Vu Ba Phu, director of Vietrade, at a conference on Monday to discuss 2018 tasks, said that trade promotion programmes attracted nearly 15 million visitors with 357,000 transactions last year.

The national trade promotion programme helped exporting companies to penetrate new markets of significant potential and expand exports to major markets.

Vietrade’s initial statistics showed that exports to ASEAN markets rose by 24.3 per cent, to China by 60.6 per cent and to Japan by 14.2 per cent last year.

The programme focused on promoting exports of agricultural and fishery products with an expense of VND31 billion or 34.7 per cent of the programme’s total expense, as well as industrial products with an expense of VND10.1 billion.

Developing the domestic market was also important, with trade promotion programmes organised in border, mountainous and remote areas in line with the campaign of Vietnamese priority for Vietnamese goods, Phu said.

However, Phu said that many local trade fairs were still poor in products and organisations, which were not attractive to customers.

In 2018, Vietrade would enhance supervision on the implementation of trade promotion programmes to improve efficiency and provide training to associations and local agencies in organising trade promotion activities.

The national trade promotion programme in 2016 helped generate more than $350 million in contract values and transactions, and attracted two million visitors. — VNS