Korean Commercial Attaché: Vietnam is the best economic partner of Korea

“Many FDI enterprises think of themselves as members of Vietnam society, contributing to Vietnam economic development. They expect to have dialogues with the Vietnam government based on mutual trust. And, I wish to suggest that Vietnam upgrade supporting industries to attract more FDIs,” recommended Mr. Kim Eui Joong, Commercial Attaché of the Republic of Korea when asked about what Vietnam should do to attract more FDI. Luong Tuan reports. 

Vietnam and Korea have been strategic partners since 2009. How would you assess the economic - trade - investment relationship between the two countries over more than 10 years?

During last 10 years, economic cooperative relationship between Korea and Vietnam has become much closer. Now, Vietnam is the best economic partner of Korea. For example, Vietnam became the 3rd largest exporting country from Korea, and also, Korea became the 1st largest FDI country in Vietnam. Especially, Korea-Vietnam FTA, which came into effect 2015, has played a great role of expanding trade volumes and investment between two partners. For the future, both countries need to cooperate more and more to overcome worsened global economic environment.

In your opinion, what are the strong points of the Vietnam market? What business areas are Korean enterprises interested in when investing in Vietnam?

I think Vietnam is the most attractive production base, and also promising domestic market among ASEAN countries. As we know, Vietnam has young and good manpower, shows steady good growth rate in macro-economies, big domestic market for consumer goods, and also has global FTA networks like CPTPP, EVIFTA. Besides that, I would like to say that the Vietnam government has passion and vision to change their own industries by themselves. All these elements have been attracting Korean enterprises continuously.

How do you assess the level of competitiveness of Vietnam's economy?

Personally, I think Vietnam is among top levels in terms of competiveness among ASEAN countries. Compared to neighboring countries, Vietnam has better institutional competiveness, such as protecting system of foreign investors, and also wide-openness to global trade and foreign investment. As commented already, Vietnam government has been trying to design long-term policy measures for upgrading domestic industries, which will boost Vietnam’s competiveness.

What should Vietnam do to continue to attract more investment from Korea and other countries in the world?

I think that showing continuous trust to foreign investors is very important. Many FDI enterprises think themselves as members of Vietnam society, contributing to Vietnam economic development. They expect to have dialogues with the Vietnam government based on mutual trust. And, I wish to suggest that Vietnam upgrade supporting industries to attract more FDIs. Many FDI companies point out that they have difficulties in improving localization due to lacks of local parts partners. The Korean government is ready to cooperate together in the field of upgrading parts and material industries of Vietnam.

Thank you very much!