Hanoi: Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien has affirmed the determination to strengthen trade promotion and export to major markets, optimising free trade agreements (FTA), making full use of opportunities, and actively responding to challenges in 2024.

In an interview granted to Vietnam News Agency, the minister said that his ministry will coordinate with relevant agencies to support domestic firms to conduct trade promotion activities in new and promising markets, while prioritising the supply of market information and trade opportunities to increase market share in traditional markets and exploit new ones.

Particularly, the ministry will assist the building and implementation of concentrated and large-scale trade promotion events with the connections of regions and sectors in targeted markets. At the same time, it will combine trade promotion with investment, culture and tourism promotion, said the official.

Along with effectively implementing branding activities by honouring products recogn
ised by the Vietnamese national trademark programme, the ministry will enhance trade promotion capacity in parallel with trademark building and development at three levels from national, sector and product levels in association with geographical indications, he said.

Meanwhile, the ministry will provide market information and capacity improvement training to localities, trade association, businesses and cooperatives using digital platforms, stated Dien. According to the minister, Vietnam has been one of the 20 leading economies with biggest trade scales in the world, which goes along with increasing number of cases of investigation and application of trade remedies in foreign markets, which had amounted to 240 cases in 24 markets as of December 2023.

In order to ease negative impact of the cases, Dien advised businesses to diversify their export markets and products, while carefully studying laws and regulations regarding trade defence remedies in foreign markets.

Besides, domestic firms should increase th
eir competitiveness by enhancing their product quality and increasing added values in their products, he said.

In 2024, along with optimising underway FTAs, the conclusion of negotiations for new deals with new markets such as Israel and the UAE is expected to open up new trade, investment and export opportunities for Vietnam, Dien said, adding that the upgrade of relations with big partners such as China, the US and the EU, as well as efforts to improve the investment environment of Vietnam are also hoped to bring about new chances for the country to increase production and export capacity./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency