Promoting Supporting Industrial Businesses to Join Global Supply Chains

The Sourcing Fair for Supporting Industry with Buyer 2025 (SFS 2025) recently took place in Ho Chi Minh City. This annual event is organized by the city’s Department of Industry and Trade in collaboration with the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (HEPZA) and the Board of Management of Saigon Hi-Tech Park, with the aim of connecting domestic supporting industrial companies with major FDI firms.

The fair attracted 20 FDI companies and connected them with 100 local suppliers in a bid to boost linkages in high-value supply chains.

Speaking at the event, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngoc, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Industry and Trade, emphasized that, after eight editions, the fair has become a key platform for fostering substantive connections between domestic supporting industrial enterprises and FDI companies or major manufacturers. To date, the program has recorded over 136 FDI participants and facilitated more than 2,100 direct meetings and contacts with 470 Vietnamese supporting industrial factories, most of which are small and medium in size but capable of catering for market demands.

Themed “Connecting HCM City Supporting Industrial Businesses to High-Value Industrial Supply Chains”, the event showed a clear approach to enhancing the position of HCM City’s supporting industries in global supply chains and reaffirmed a strategic shift toward increasing local value and active international integration.

She added that supplier-buyer matchmaking in 2025 would go beyond on-site meetings. “The organizers will follow up on the potential assessments of each business and promote their participation in HCM City’s long-term potential local supplier development program. This will gradually enhance domestic supply capacity and help build a sustainable supporting industrial ecosystem for the city,” she stressed.

More than 300 one-on-one meetings were pre-scheduled and carefully arranged prior to the event based on the specific needs of each side, hence ensuring effective and relevant connections. The hybrid format - combining both in-person and online sessions - also broadened access for enterprises with geographic or time constraints. In addition, the event featured thematic seminars on supply chains in high-value industries such as precision engineering, machinery and equipment, semiconductor and chip, and medical manufacturing.

The fair also hosted direct supplier-buyer matchmaking sessions with representatives of major corporations and FDI companies from Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe, and leading domestic industrial firms in such sectors as mechanical engineering, electronics, automotive, healthcare, and aviation.

Le Hien (Vietnam Business Forum)