TRÀ VINH — The Mekong Delta provice of Trà Vinh is focusing on helping local businesses promote and sell their products towards the end of the year, especially exploiting favourable policies brought by Việt Nam’s free trade agreements with foreign markets, such as the UKVFTA, CPTPP and EVFTA.

The provincial Department of Industry and Trade will focus more on supporting businesses to partake in trade facilitation programmes and conferences so that they can promote their products to consumers and potential partners, as well as expand their markets and operations through co-operation with local and foreign businesses.

This would effectively carry out decision issued by the People’s Committee concerning the province’s global integration and utilisation of free trade agreements, such as the United Kingdom–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (UKVFTA) and the European Union–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).

The province’s Decision 1082/QĐ-UBND, issued in 2021, dictates Trà Vinh’s plan to implement the UKVFTA, which stipulates that it needs to raise awareness of the trade agreement, its requirements, and how businesses can best make use of the opportunities that it can bring.

It has to focus on providing market information and forecasts to help local exporters better understand the UK market and help small to medium-sized businesses improve their compeititiveness to better suit the trade deal.

Additionally, according to the document, Trà Vinh should focus on key agricultural products with high export potential, including rice, coconut, fruits, seafood, animal husbandry products, and goods certified with One Commune One Product (OCOP), which are products that can enjoy tariff elimination under the UK trade deal.

To help businesses increase trade, the department will strengthen its assistance for businesses in applying clean production models, and developing regional specialty products and OCOP goods.

It will carry out programmes to support the application of modern technologies in production lines so businesses can improve their output, product quality and competitiveness.

Additionally, Trà Vinh is focusing on solutions to improve its business climate and create favourable conditions to attract investors. For example, it is calling for investors to develop infrastructure at its industrial clusters and speed up the construction of technical infrastructure at these clusters to draw in more businesses.

Over the years, Trà Vinh has organised conferences to disseminate information about the UKVFTA and other trade agreements to businesses, helping both businesses and government officials have a better understanding of the agreements and how to take advantage of them.

The province also pays a great deal of attention on creating favourable investment climate. It is calling for investment to develop renewable energy, seaport logistics, agriculture, fisheries, agricultural and seafood processing, among others. — VNS