Utilising WTO Entry Advantages

 

Delivering the opening address to the dialogue, VCCI President Vu Tien Loc said that WTO accession is an important event that marks a turning point in Vietnam development. After joining the WTO, particularly in the 2007-2008 period, Vietnam’s economy had positive changes. This is an extremely important spiritual element, especially to the Vietnamese business community.

 

Vietnam has made a lot of important achievements after it joined the WTO and served as a typical example of the WTO. After the short period of positive development, Vietnam’s economy is becoming more vulnerable than the world economy. The question is how Vietnamese companies are able to utilise WTO entry advantages as well as free trade agreements under negotiations. This is also the reason why the Government of Vietnam has introduced policies to create breakthroughs in institutional reform where administrative procedure reform and corporate restructuring are focused.

 

He added that tax is one of Vietnam’s current weaknesses. In late 2012 and early 2013, businesses in Vietnam had to spend 872 hours a year fulfilling tax procedures. The Prime Minister and the Government have instructed tax authorities to reduce the tax payment time to 171 hours by June 2015, on par with ASEAN standards. The Government also issued ​​an important resolution on equitisation of 432 State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 2015.

 

Dr Loc said that Vietnam now needs to improve competitiveness ranking to utilise preferences from the accession to international organisations, including the WTO.

Pascal Lamy said that Vietnam has attained many economic achievements after it entered the WTO, especially in economic growth, trade development, foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction, tourism. In the context of financial crisis and global economic downturn, Vietnam still enjoyed positive growth.

 

He said that WTO always stands ready to support Vietnam to build roadmaps for each specific phase to take solid steps in global economic integration process. Vietnam needs to further improve the legal system to meet WTO standards, he added, stressing that reducing tariff barriers is a must-do work to boost production in the current period.

 

Giving an answer to the question that trade agreements often put forth consumer protection employment and domestic production protection are also of importance, he said the world of yesterday is different from the world of today. Of course, yesterday existences still have certain effect on today factors. The opening of trade has greatly influenced the structure of the economy. Consumer protection, employment protection and production protection must revolve around product quality issues. For example, in fishery or food industry, comparative criteria used in the course of trade are quality and standards. Even, quality is even important in lower market segments.

 

Pascal Lamy also answered questions raised by Vietnamese businesses relating to the reform of enterprises, banks and import policies. At present, the world is in a transitional period and the standards are already in existence. Many countries in the world have centuries of reform experience. This is not a new issue but the method to do may be new.

 

Pascal Lamy said it is important to know about self advantages, how much added value can be created and whether import is needed in the fields that we can do. Normally, we tend to push up export but we do not want to import. However, today, countries that export most are also those that import a lot. We must import what we need to serve domestic demands because the ultimate goal is to provide the goods with optimal price for consumers. Nevertheless, we must place pros and cons when we decide to import a commodity.

 

He also stressed that, like many other countries, Vietnam cannot develop its economy based on natural resources but it must rely on its marine environment. But, the issue is not how many fish is caught but how fish is caught and processed in the best way to produce high competitiveness on the market.

 

Therefore, according to Pascal Lamy, to be successful, apart from joining international trade organisations, the best trade policy of Vietnam is to invest and upgrade education and training.