Senior US Trade Official to Travel to Vietnam Next Week
Senior US Trade Official to Travel to Vietnam Next Week
President of the US-Vietnam Trade Council (USVTC) cum Executive Vice President of the US-ASEAN Business Council (USABC) Virginia Foote will arrive in Hanoi next week, according to a source from a Vietnamese newspaper.
The trip of Ms Foote aims to discuss Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), local media quoted experts as saying.
The visitor and her host's counterparts are likely to put on the table such issues as the opening of services in Vietnam, of which both countries did not reach an agreement during their first bilateral negotiation talks held last October, experts forecast.
Last week, while delivering a speech before the US Trade Commission, EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson said he was "very optimistic" about Vietnam’s possibility of becoming an official member of the Geneva-based global trade watchdog at the next WTO ministerial meeting set in December in Hong Kong.
To win accession to the international trade body, Vietnam will have to complete talks with major trading partners like the US, Japan and China as well as two or three rounds of multilateral negotiations in Geneva.
If Vietnam can enter the WTO before 2006, it would not be required to carry out new WTO commitments, because the Doha negotiations - which aim to slash subsidies, tariffs and other barriers to world trade - could possibly be completed in 2006, predicted Deputy US Trade Representative Peter Allgeier.
Vietnam started negotiating with WTO members in 1995, but the country was only indicating a real interest for its future membership from 2003. It has so far finished six bilateral deals with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the European Union and Singapore.
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