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Pakistani tanners seek markets
A Pakistani delegation of 11 leading tannery and leather enterprises is visiting HCM City to seek business opportunities and enhance trade relations between the two countries.
Speaking at the Viet Nam-Pakistan business meeting held on Tuesday in HCM City, Ambassador Shahid MG Kiani said Pakistan was famous for leather shoes with high quality and reasonable price, and the Pakistan businesses were interested in expanding trade in Viet Nam.
The Pakistan businesses displayed their products at the meeting.
After visiting two Vietnamese leather shoe companies, the Pakistan delegation said they were confident that Pakistani leather would satisfy the Vietnamese enterprises' demands.
Nguyen The Hung, Deputy General Director of the HCM City branch of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that since Pakistan and Viet Nam set up diplomatic relations in 1972, they had deepened bilateral co-operation in commerce and investment areas.
Two countries' bilateral turnover has seen a sharp increase in recent years, reaching US$10 million in 2000 and amounting to $150 million in 2008.
Viet Nam exports to Pakistan in 2008 equalled $95 million, mainly in tea, pepper, cotton, rubber and steel. Viet Nam imported textile, leather shoe, medicine and food from Pakistan.
Hung said Viet Nam was a potential tannery and leather market with an annual growth rate of 16 percent.
Export turnover of the Vietnamese leather shoe industry was $4 billion in 2007 and $4.5 billion in 2008. However, Vietnamese tannery factories met only 20 per cent of the industry demands, causing a heavy reliance on imported leather.
Hung added the HCM City authorities would create many preferential policies to boost the economic co-operation of Pakistan businesses in the city.
The meeting was held by the Pakistan Embassy in collaboration with Pakistan Tannery Association and the VCCI's HCM City branch.
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