|
Vietnam, Myanmar seek ways to prevent trade decline
Vietnamese and Myanmar trade officials met in Hanoi on March 30 to seek ways to remove difficulties and obstacles that have hindered and recently caused a decline in bilateral trade.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Thanh Bien and Myanmar Trade Minister Tin Naing Thein agreed that the Vietnam-Myanmar Joint Committee on Economic Cooperation will convene its meeting every two years to oversee trade activities between the two countries.
Apart from that, the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Myanmar Trade Ministry will be responsible for organising traders’ visits to each other to explore cooperation opportunities in addition to appraising those visits’ efficiency in conformity with the real situation, the two officials said.
According to the Myanmar Customs Office, the two countries’ two-way trade dropped 76.2 percent over the same period last year to 5.7 million USD in the first two months.
Explaining the trade decline, the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade pointed to adverse impacts of the global economic crisis and Myanmar’s time-consuming processing of import and administrative procedures.
Accordingly, Deputy Minister Bien proposed that the Myanmar Trade Ministry work to soon address problems concerning import procedures while coordinating with relevant Vietnamese agencies to find out effective solutions to tackle the existing issues to further facilitate activities of the two countries’ businesses.
He also suggested the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade start garnering opinions in April from businesspeople, especially those who are doing business in Myanmar, concerning obstacles they had met in Myanmar for resolution.
The Vietnamese official also told his guests of a plan to organise an international trade fair in Yangon as part of the 2009 national trade promotion programme to provide a venue for the two countries’ businesspeople to meet and explore cooperation opportunities to prevent the trade decline from plunging farther.
Vietnam currently ranks 16th among exporters to Myanmar with its export earnings standing at 32.6 million USD in 2008, coming from some simple products such as materials for apparels, plastics, electric wire and electric cables.
Meanwhile, the Vietnamese Trade Mission in Myanmar said that many Vietnamese products can be exported to Myanmar, including coffee, pepper, tea, cashewnut, and processed foods.
It estimated that Vietnam’s exports to Myanmar would be 32 million USD and its imports are likely to reach 100 million USD this year./.
Vietnamplus
|
