The year 2010 marks the year when Asean-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) officially comes into effect. This is the foundation for Vietnam's export growth, Dao Tran Nhan head of Ministry of Industry and Trade's Asia Pacific Market Department yesterday spoke at the ministry's conference in Hanoi.

Since 2004, China has continuously been the biggest trade partner of Vietnam. In 2006, the bilateral trade of two countries reached $10.4 billion, which was doubled to $20.2 billion in 2008. Although suffering the impacts of global economic crisis last year, Vietnam's export turnover to China still surged 8.23 percent against 2008, bringing China to be the third largest export market for Vietnam, after US and Japan.
However, according to Nhan, while Vietnam's export to China accounted for 8.59 percent of its total export turnover but Vietnam only occupied nearly 0.48 percent of China's total import spending. So, the export opportunity for Vietnam in China market remains very high, he remarked.

As for Asean market, Vietnam's export import turnover gained $22.5 billion last year, including the export turnover of Vietnam at $8.7 billion and import spending of $13.8 billion. Factually, the country's capacity of producing some export goods is limited as compared with regional nations.

ACFTA with strong commitments taking effects from 2010 will continue opening more opportunities for Vietnam to promote exports through its traditional relation with Asean and China.
As said by Nguyen Hong Thanh-expert from Ministry of Industry and Trade's Multilateral Trade and Economic Policy Department, as from January 1, 2010, ACFTA officially was actualised with the commitment of strong tariff cuts from China and Asean. Accordingly, a series of commodities imported from Vietnam to China and Asean-6 will enjoy an import tariff of 0-5 percent. Particularly Vietnam signed to carry out the tariff cuts five years later, starting from 2015.

"Therefore, in next five years, Vietnamese businesses need to take these advantages in tariffs to enhance the cooperation in trade, investment and production to expand export market", Thanh advised.

In details, China will remove tariffs on some sensitive products for Asean countries by 2012. In return, Asean countries nodded to sign an agreement on establishing a free trade region and build up Asean economic community in 2015. The agreement is to liberalise trade (cutting and abolishing tariffs, removing non-tariff measures according to a roadmap, simplifying customs procedures to create conditions for trade), open service market and enhance internal investment.

At the conference, all delegates agreed, one of leading measures to boost exports of Vietnam made goods to China and Asean is given priority for trade promotion activities. Le Xuan Duong, director of Export Support Centre of Trade Promotion Department said in a statement that Vietnamese state will strengthen preferential policies and supports in capital, infrastructure, warehouses, insurance and banking services in order to encourage goods exchange with regional countries.

In 2010, the government approved the national trade promotion programme Phase 1 with 27 plans capitalised at over 74 billion dong.