Forum “Destination Vietnam” Bringing Italy Closer to Vietnam

Addressing the opening of the Forum, Mr Lorenzo Angeloni said Vietnam is one of the ideal destinations and from this year, Italy will see Vietnam as one of the key partners to enhance comprehensive and long-term cooperation. Until now, the Italian businesses have limited information about the market potential, economic institutions, investment environment as well as the strength of the economic development of Vietnam. To improve this situation, Vietnam should be well- prepared for some of industries of infrastructure, human resources, culture, education and investment environment to welcome the Italian businesses.

It is seen that the current investment policies of the countries in the world still focus on the dynamic economic region with high growth and Italy is no exception to this trend. Talking about Vietnam's strengths to attract the attention of the Italian investors, Ambassador Lorenzo Angeloni said Vietnam has the advantages of cheap labour, a strategic position at the centre of the ASEAN region; besides, Vietnam has a stable political situation and the quite high annual GDP growth rate. Especially, now more than 90 percent of the Italian businesses are small and medium, which share the similarities with the characteristics of the economy of Vietnam. Therefore, Vietnam will become one of the destinations of the Italian businesses of the year in the spirit of "Bringing Vietnam closer to Italy ".

Agreeing with Ambassador Lorenzo Angeloni, Mr Carlo Alberto Roncarati, Vice President of the Association of Chambers of Commerce of Italy and President of the Association of Chambers of Commerce of Emilia-Romagna, Vietnam and Italy have many similarities to the human, culture, and labour. The special advantage helps their businesses to gain great potentials to adapt to the different environments and to enhance cooperation in the field of production and export.

Talking about the potential economic development of the Emilia Romagna region, Ms Palma Costi, President of the Legislative Assembly of the Emilia-Romagna region, said the Emilia Romagna region is the Italy's most developed economy with 4.5 million people, of which more than a half million businesses and many of these businesses with high profiles and abilities to invest for long-term in the areas of Vietnam such as infrastructure, machinery manufacturing, food processing products, molds, wood, plastic, and metal. The Italia's government in general and in particular, Emilia Romagna will create all favorable conditions to promote trade and support cooperation between the enterprises of the two countries in the best ways. According to Ms Palma Costi, from the attraction of the investment environment in Vietnam, there will be more businesses from the Emilia Romagna region to choose Vietnam as investment destinations. Besides the traditional areas of cooperation such as industrial development and infrastructure, the Italian companies will also expand cooperation into other potential areas such as technology, education and training, reservation of the value of intangible culture in accordance with the policy of the Italian government of diversifying the investment cooperation with Vietnam and improving cooperation between the two countries to reach strategic partnership, of which the main partnership is to invest in Vietnam.

Mr Carlo Alberto Roncarati added that some strong areas of the Emilia -Romagna region include mechanics and machinery production with total annual machinery exports of over 50 billion euros. One of the factors to make Emilia Romagna become the leading manufacturing machinery and equipment manufacturing of the world is the model of industrial clusters. In ​​the industrial clusters, there are not many businesses that can produce and manufacture a complete machinery product from A to Z because most of them are small and medium enterprises. Each business produces only a part, and then, all of them will put all the parts together to produce a complete product. Mr Carlo Alberto Roncarati stressed: “With this model, we have added a strong point that all small and medium enterprises who can produce a part in a production line have more time and financial resources to continue to produce innovative new products with higher quality, contributing to the improvement of the products.