The Trade Promotion Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade said it will focus on innovative campaigns to expand export markets.

The department will also ramp up advertisement activities to make Vietnamese brands better known abroad.

It will also hold training courses and consult industry associations on trade promotion activities and teach enterprises trade promotion skills before, during and after trade promotion events.

Vu Ba Phu, director of the department, said the 2019 national trade promotion programme is expected to be more practical than previous years.

At present, the department has effectively implemented many trade promotion programmes, especially a national trade promotion programme to help businesses boost consumption of goods domestically and abroad.

Phu said this national programme has become an effective channel of market development, focusing on brand development for a few key products each year.

In 2018, under the national trade promotion programme, the department implemented 171 projects with a total budget of VND103 billion (US$4.4 million).

The total value of contracts and direct transactions at export promotion events reached more than $9.3 billion. Total revenue from selling goods at trade fairs exceeded VND141 billion.

Thank to the national trade promotion programme, many local businesses continued to export to Russia and Eastern European countries while many others strengthened activities in markets in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Domestically, many localities have held investment and trade promotion conferences on many different topics to attract investment and promote local goods consumption and exports.

In addition, localities have closely worked with businesses to implement trade promotion programmes and support them in advertising.

Co-operation with Amazon

Notably, the Ministry of Industry and Trade recently linked up with Amazon to support Vietnamese exports through this e-commerce website.

This is a new opportunity for Vietnamese businesses to sell their goods around the world. Amazon currently has 300 million customers from 180 countries and sellers from 172 countries, including Viet Nam.

According to experts, Amazon’s entry into Viet Nam will bring many advantages. Of which, Viet Nam’s e-commerce market will develop, leading to the growth of sales and logistics and bringing many quality goods with competitive prices to Vietnamese customers. Besides, Amazon will bring imported goods into Viet Nam and bring Vietnamese exports to other countries.

Meanwhile, the biggest benefit from Amazon’s entry into Viet Nam is that Vietnamese enterprises will have chances to develop Vietnamese brands and goods in e-commerce, training Vietnamese businesses on e-commerce and learning sales skills on Amazon.

However, to take advantage of selling on Amazon, Phu said Vietnamese businesses must implement regulations on origin and product quality because big export markets, such as the EU, US and Japan, have strict regulations on product quality and origin.

Moreover, language is also a barrier for many Vietnamese retailers in accessing e-commerce floors, including Amazon, Phu said. Therefore, Vietnamese businesses need to improve their foreign language skills and ability to build brands to take full advantage of selling goods on Amazon. — VNS