Viet Nam will need to take advantage of new value chains in Southeast Asia and New Zealand to boost exports to the latter and achieve the bilateral trade target of US$2 billion in 2024, a workshop heard in HCM on Friday.

Tran Phu Lu, deputy director of HCM City’s Investment and Trade Promotion Centre (ITPC), told the workshop on trade promotion with New Zealand that the country had become an important economic partner of Viet Nam with trade between them growing steadily.

They established a comprehensive partnership in 2009 and signed the ASEAN - Australia - New Zealand Free Trade Agreement in 2010 and the Viet Nam-New Zealand strategic partnership in 2020, he said.

New Zealand is Viet Nam’s 31st largest trading partner and Viet Nam is New Zealand’s 14th largest, he said.

Their trade was worth $1.31 billion in 2020.

Viet Nam’s major exports are phones and components (worth $166 million this year), computers, electronic products and components ($71 million) and footwear ($40 million).

It imported mostly milk and dairy products ($273 million) as of October.

Both nations are members of new-generation free trade deals including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

According to Joseph Nelson, consul general of New Zealand in HCM City, his country has a population of 5.1 million and GDP per capita of $39,900 (23rd highest in the world), and its main industries include food processing, textiles, machinery, transport equipment, finance, tourism, and mining.

The seminar was organised as part of The Exhibition Week on Food and Foodstuff Products by ITPC and the HCM City Food and Foodstuff Association. — VNS