“The EFTA Vietnam FTA Agreement is presently the highest priority for us. If we manage to have a new generation FTA, we will get a “New Trade and Investment Highway” for companies of both the EFTA countries and Vietnam to increase the “traffic” and make it smoother, safer and quicker,” said H.E Mr Andrej Motyl, Ambassador of Switzerland,in an interview with Vietnam Business Forum. Minh Xuan reports.
Vietnamese National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Sinh Hung paid an official visit to Switzerland in early 2014. What are your comments about the visit?
The visit included two diverse missions: one was to Geneva, it was multilateral, it included meetings with the Inter Parliamentary Union, which were devoted to the relations between the Vietnamese NA and the IPU and also were turned towards the coming IPU meeting in Vietnam in March 2015. Representatives of Parliaments from all around the world will converge on Hanoi and work within the IPU Forum on promoting their causes.
The second mission was to Bern and had a bilateral aspect. It included meetings between the NA and the two Chambers of the Swiss Parliament, as well as with the Swiss Executive. The meetings with the latter were focused on Political Institution Building as well as on Economic Development Cooperation. The visit enriched both sides.
How would you assess Vietnam’s efforts in negotiation of trade agreements in the context of globalisation?
The Vietnamese Government has shown courage and vision in negotiating at the same time with diverse economic driving powers. In the TPP talks with the US and Japan, in the EU Vietnam FTA talks with the 28 EU states. It also is negotiating an FTA with South Korea and one with Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. And the EFTA (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein) – Vietnam FTA talks are also preparing the ground for a strong push for more trade and investment.
I personally find Vietnam’s pace of its negotiation with the EFTA too cautious. This is because our economies are largely complementary and mostly not in direct competition. An ambitious far reaching FTA would be a major signal for our economic agents to launch themselves even more vigorously into each other’s markets, having more legal safety nets and less tariffs and non-tariff obstacles between them and the markets.
More generally, the FTAs are probably the best vehicle to fight Vietnamese NCES (Non Competitive Economic Segments). These segments are very comfortable with the present system, where the people of the country as well as the competitive parts of the economy are subsidising them heavily.
Does Switzerland plan for further development of trade and investment relations with Vietnam in 2015?
We are not a major political power, so we do a lot of our diplomacy through multilateral fora. Presently we have the OSCE Chairmanship and had in the past 11 months an important role in the attempt to defuse the Ukrainian tragedy.
But we are an upper middle size economic power. China has 170 times more inhabitants than Switzerland, but its GDP is only 13 times higher. We belong to the 10 biggest foreign direct investing nations in the world. Vietnam’s leaders can choose whose model they wish to follow.
The EFTA Vietnam FTA Agreement is presently the highest priority for us. If we manage to have a new generation FTA, we will get a “New Trade and Investment Highway” for companies of both the EFTA countries and Vietnam to increase the “traffic” and make it smoother, safer and quicker.
In Switzerland we have a mature market economy, so we have to leave it to the Swiss companies to take the business initiatives, but you can be sure that we the civil servants will support them seven days of the week if necessary.
More trade between the countries and new Swiss companies in Vietnam and vice versa means more jobs and more income for both countries. I am convinced that Vietnam and Switzerland have a great common economic future. We are working with Swiss high tech companies on the concept, that their best “shared value approach” is the one of supporting Vietnamese partners through know-how transfer. It is in the interest of the Swiss companies to have domestic supply partners here and to help them to reach global qualities levels. Our short, medium and long term interests are thus practically the same.
Vietnam's goods export value to Switzerland is currently twice that of Switzerland to Vietnam, but we are not complaining – we are proud of you Vietnamese as our development partners. Vietnam is besides Indonesia our preferred technical development partner in all of Asia. Switzerland spends presently US$35 million per year (over four years) on technical knowledge transfer to Vietnam. If you do better, it means our help is helpful.
In a nutshell: if we both continue to increase our reciprocal exports over 30 percent per year, as is the case in 2014, we will have the brightest imaginable common future.
Our relationship will not be only comprehensive and more strategic, but will be extremely beneficiary to the two countries, the two administrations and particularly the private entrepreneurs and their employees.
Vietnamese
