Việt Nam's exports to India reached US$8.5 billion for the first time in 2023, up nearly 10 per cent over the same period of 2022, according to the Vietnamese Trade Counsellor in India, Bùi Trung Thướng.

Thướng emphasised that Việt Nam-India bilateral trade in 2023 continued to grow despite many fluctuations in the world economic situation, geopolitical conflicts and disruptions in the supply chain of goods.

However, he also pointed out factors leading to difficulties and challenges for Việt Nam-India bilateral trade.

India has applied many trade barriers or trade defense measures to limit imported goods that India believes have the potential to affect or damage the domestic manufacturing industry.

Accordingly, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has issued more than 2,000 new standards for imported goods. Therefore, in recent times, some Vietnamese goods have encountered many difficulties in applying for new or extending quality standard certification.

The similarity of Vietnamese and Indian goods is also one of the difficulties.

The two countries have quite similar climates, so the types of agricultural and food products are basically the same. For example, India is the world's leading rice exporter and Việt Nam is ranked third.

To overcome these difficulties and challenges, Thướng believed that relevant agencies of the two countries need to actively communicate with each other more closely through meetings to build trust and work together.

Business communities and industry associations of the two countries also need to be more proactive in organising trade promotion programmes to find more business co-operation opportunities, thereby creating more conditions for exports.

In addition, Vietnamese businesses need to proactively change and adapt to Indian standards.

Although many Vietnamese goods have difficulty exporting to the Indian market, there are still some products that receive encouragement from the Indian Government, Thướng said.

For example, VinFast Group for the first time announced an investment project in India worth up to $2 billion. During the first five years, VinFast will invest about $500 million.

This is a very important basis to promote trade between the two countries given that a large investment project will entail moving goods and raw materials from Viet Nam to India, he added.

In addition, air connectivity has made the movement of goods and people between the two countries more convenient. In the near future, airlines actively opening more direct flights or upgrading to wide-body aircraft with larger passenger and cargo capacity will be very important factors to promote trade in goods.

Việt Nam and India are also actively opening their agricultural product markets. By combining with aviation, strategic agricultural products, and each other's export strengths, trade between the two countries will continue to maintain growth momentum in the coming time. — VNS