Trade Counsellors: Vital Assistance for Vietnamese Exporters

 

Mr Do Thang Hai, Head of Trade Promotion Department, said that the department cannot closely supervise each specific trade promotion programme overseas, so it needs the coordination and appraisal of trade counsellors to make more effective policies.

 

In fact, along with counsellors’ useful assistance to trade promotion programmes in foreign countries, their timely warnings have helped domestic enterprises considerably reduce losses when exporting products to “sensitive” markets. For example, Vietnam’s Commercial Affair Office to the European Union warned domestic seafood exporters about the risk that some EU countries may stop importing tuna and swordfish from Vietnam in late December of last year, which helped local enterprises prepare.

 

However, the biggest difficulty for trade counsellors is the shortage of information about the domestic market. The representative of Vietnam’s Commercial Affairs to the leading importer the U.S., Counsellor Ngo Van Thoan admitted, “Despite the great effort of trade counsellors overseas, trade promotion activities in foreign markets are still ineffective because counsellors and domestic enterprises do not have a mutual understanding.” The reason is partially because of the scarcity of trade counsellors allocated in Vietnam’s departments overseas, so they fail to process enough information for timely assistance.

 

Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Bien said, "After one year of close connection, the relationship has been considerably improved. However, it is not so effective that full and timely information is provided for domestic businesses to serve their transactions overseas. In fact, counsellors do not have a thorough understanding of the strengths of domestic enterprises and the advantages of local products in order to help them penetrate foreign markets.”

 

For instance, many Vietnamese exporters to ASEAN countries have so far not known about the benefits and preferential tax rates they can receive since Vietnam joined ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). Also, counsellors have failed to provide full information and answer queries of businesses about the procedures to prove goods origin and the proper invoices and vouchers needed to receive those preferential conditions. "Consequently, many enterprises hesitate to mention these terms when exporting commodities." In these cases, businesses are at a disadvantage. Clearly, trade counsellors have not well carried out their responsibilities of being a bridge to provide information about export markets for businesses.

 

Moreover, many counsellors are not really able to supply information about local businesses to partners. Therefore, Commercial Affairs has to ask for information from the Department of Trade Promotion and call for help from domestic industry associations, instead of directly collecting information for partners.

 

In summary, while enterprises complain about the difficulty of exporting goods due to the shortage of information about target market and the requirements of partners, trade counsellors also complain about the lack of information on business and commodities. With the above situation, the relationship between counsellors and domestic enterprises will not improve unless the two sides actively develop a tight connection.

 

The Ministry of Industry and Trade plans to encourage counsellors to appraise trade promotion programmes this year. In addition, counsellors will have the opportunity to propose proper trade promotion programmes for the market they are responsible for, and suggest specific times for the most effective programmes.

 

In order to overcome these weak points, in a recent meeting with trade counsellors in Hanoi, the Department of Trade Promotion proposed a process for carrying out trade promotion activities inside and outside the country, with coordination between Vietnam’s commercial affairs offices overseas and domestic trade promotion departments, organisations and businesses.

 

According to the proposal of the Department of Trade Promotion, Vietnam’s commercial affairs in foreign countries will send their suggestions to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (specifically to the Department of Trade Promotion, Market Department and Export Department) annually as of December 31, to frame orientations for trade promotion programmes in the next year. Their suggestions will be based on the real situations of local markets.

 

With proposals from the commercial affairs offices abroad, domestic offices and departments will draw specific orientations on market and export targets to submit to the Ministry of Industry and Trade for approval before January 31 each year.

 

The Head of the Department of Trade Promotion also noted that, apart from analyzing and assessing the challenges and opportunities for Vietnam’s key exports and potential commodities in local markets, overseas commercial affairs will give recommendations on specific forms of trade promotion, time, location, scale, participants and implementation programmes suitable to the particular conditions of each market, in a bid to maximise the effectiveness of trade promotion programmes.

 

According to the department head Do Thang Hai, the effectiveness of trade promotion programmes lies in planning. The proposals and opinion contributions are very important to make good plans for trade promotion, because only the trade counsellors have a thorough understanding of the markets they are responsible for.

 

In addition, domestic enterprises have to collect enough professional documents, such as publications or CD discs, and send them to commercial affairs in each market to help counsellors introduce Vietnamese exports to foreign countries. The counsellor’s role is to seek partners and do preliminary tasks that businesses are unable to carry out by themselves.