Japanese Companies Wish to Cooperate with Vietnam in Manufacturing and Industry

Speaking at the meeting, Dr Doan Duy Khuong reaffirmed that Vietnam and Japan had a traditional friendship, the two countries shared many tremendous mutual interests both in short and long term. Vietnam regarded Japan as one of the major and most important partners in the fields of trade, investment, culture and tourism. VCCI maintained close and effective cooperation relations with leading Japanese economic organisations such as JETRO, Nippon Keidanren, JCCI and local chambers of commerce, Keizai Doyukai.

 

Regarding cooperation with Kanagawa Prefecture, Mr Khuong confirmed that initial results of economic cooperation of the prefecture in Vietnam was very positive and called for further expansion. Vice President hoped that after this visit, the prefecture could find more partners and continue to broaden investment in Vietnam.

 

Sharing the same point of view, Mr Teruhiko Moriya said that boosting cooperation with Vietnam had always been in Kanagawa’s interest; currently Kanagawa had about 40 businesses investing in Vietnam. This visit of the delegation served three main goals: to study in depth about the investment environment in Vietnam; to promoting cooperation in tourism and to strengthen civil exchanges and cooperation.

 

According to Mr Teruhiko Moriya, Kanagawa had potential in the fields of manufacture and industry. The prefecture hoped to continue cooperating with Vietnamese partners in these advantageous sectors as well as other sectors such as agriculture, high technology, high quality human resources training as well as labour cooperation. As stated by representatives from Kanagawa’s businesses, there were many companies in the prefecture wished to cooperate with Vietnam however met difficulties due to Vietnam's inadequate and volatile investment law that made taking advantage of investment incentives impossible.

 

VCCI Vice President Doan Duy Khuong affirmed that Vietnam always highly appreciated Japanese investors as well as strived to create the most favourable conditions for Japanese investment to work effectively in Vietnam. On behalf of VCCI, Mr Khuong received Japanese businesses’ comments on the law of investment and promised to raise this issue at the meeting between businesses and the Prime Minister at the end of April so that the government could develop appropriate changes and create the most favourable conditions for foreign investors in general and Japanese enterprises in particular.

 

On cooperation in tourism, Mr Khuong said that travel from Vietnam to Japan remained weak partly due to economic conditions, low income of Vietnamese specifically, and partly due to ineffective promotional strategy. Kanagawa should focus more and design specific strategies for each target tourist group to achieve the best results.

Emphasising the role of manufacturing and industrial sectors, Mr Doan Duy Khuong said that these were very important industries and important contributors to economic development. Mr Khuong hoped to deepen cooperation with Kanagawa businesses in this area.

 

There are about 32,000 Vietnamese currently living, studying and working in Japan, of which about 2,500-3,000 are students and about 16,000-17,000 are trainees. The number is likely to continue increasing sharply in the near future. This will provide an extremely important advantage in the development of relations between Vietnam and the Kanagawa Prefecture in particular and Japan in general.

 

Mr Moriya expressed his hope that Kanagawa Prefecture would become a vital trade gateway between Vietnam and Japan, contributing positively to deepen the strategic partnership between the two countries' in general, as well as between Kanagawa and Vietnam's localities in terms of investment and cooperation in labour, industrial and agriculture production.