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Long road ahead to rural market
Shoddy product distribution in the countryside is being blamed for the market share superiority of cheap Chinese imports over locally made goods in rural areas, which are home to 70 percent of Vietnam’s population.
As Vietnam’s exports began to slow under the pressure of the global economic downturn, Vietnamese producers have started to eye closer to home.
About 70 percent of the country’s 85.789 million people are rural residents who have considerable demand for consumer goods.
A survey on the rural retail by market research company Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) revealed that 95 percent of rural household are willing to pay for television sets, 92 percent for electric or gas ovens, 33 percent for radios and 30 percent for refrigerators, Saigon Economics Times newspaper reported.
But it’s hard to find Vietnam-made products in the countryside. What you will find in the wet markets, the main shopping venue for rural consumers, are streams of cheap, low-quality Chinese imports, trucked in from the northern neighbor’s industrial towns.
Le Van Hung, deputy director of the Mekong Delta Can Tho City’s Department of Industry and Trade said home-grown businesses are leaving the market open to local retailers and vendors, who at times offer shoddy products at high prices.
“Low-quality goods are often sold for high prices here,” Hung said. “The market control officials have found expired goods with unidentified origin, torn labels or without labels being sold at local markets.”
“The ovens on sale here are also fake products,” Nguyen Phuoc Hau, a local farmer in Mekong Delta’s Vinh Long Province. “Many people here have been tricked but we have paid for the goods, we don’t have anyone to blame.”
Hau said he hoped local companies would take a harder look at rural areas.
“We farmers really hope the companies will launch mobile shopping at local markets. Twice a week is enough,” Hau said. “If the businesses are concerned about the costs, I hope the government will give measures to encourage them to do so.”
But not everyone agrees with the farmer’s position on building retail and distribution in remote parts of the country.
“The biggest obstacle for Vietnamese businesses entering rural areas is the distribution network,” Nguyen Van Nam, former head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Trade Research Institute, said.
“To solve the problem, we need to turn farmers into goods distributors in rural areas,” Nam said. “Farmers are not only the consumers but the distributors for the companies’ products there.”
vietnews, SGT
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