A forum for Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) enterprises entitled “Enhancing Asia-Europe economic ties in the context of the global economic crisis” recently took place in Ho Chi Minh City. The forum focused on current hot issues such as the crisis’ impacts on Asian and European economies and businesses, investment and trade promotion and countries’ financial and credit policies. Particularly, the forum touched measures to deal with post-crisis problems and intensify cooperation between ASEM enterprises. The meeting attracted the participation of ambassadors, government officials and representatives from international and business associations from most of Asian and European nations.
Experts said despite the world economic slump’s impacts on the majority of Asian and European economies, the cooperation between the two-continent firms still shows positive signs. The forum is really a good place for the two-side business community to discuss cooperation chances and share experience. The financial cooperation among ASEM nations brings important results, especially the ASEM Trust Fund which has helped seven out of 10 members to tackle consequences resulted by the Asian financial and monetary crisis in 1997. Over the past eight year, the fund has provided some US$ 82 million for over 70 projects, helping Asian members to improve their financial and banking system and mitigate financial impacts. This makes a great contribution for their fight against the poverty.
Solutions for post-crisis economic development
At the forum, all economists and businesses focused on discussing measures to handle economic issues after the crisis and also propose new patterns for economic cooperation for ASEM. Most of the participants highlighted the necessity for the two continents to jointly fight against the economic problems.
Sharing the same viewpoint with the UK Ambassador in Vietnam Mark Kent, many experts said it is too early to affirm that the global economic slow down has stopped as the world is facing lots of thorny issues such as the swine flu epidemic. However, they agreed that ASEM now owns a good condition to build a new financial mechanism and a new economic structure, expected to accelerate the members’ coordination. Besides, responsibilities of G20, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) should be fortified. Government of ASEM nations, particularly developed countries need to consider potentials of their domestic markets, foreign direct investment and economic growth based on export to make further effort for economic restructuring, financial service supply as well as ensure the effectiveness of stimulus package implementation.
Proposals by the UK ambassador and Danish deputy ambassador in Vietnam and many other economists as well on clean energy, new technology application, human resource capacity improvement, policy-makign and climate change received strong supports from the participants. Accordingly, companies which plan for restructuring and technology reform will have a chance to overcome the challenges in the current economic slow down, said economist Tran Du Lich from Ho Chi Minh City. At the conference, many enterprises expressed their desire to seek European partners to carry out production technology and deepen their competitiveness by applying environmentally-friendly technologies.
Industry and Trade Deputy Prime Minister Le Danh Vinh said, over the past few years, in spite of coping with several difficulties in economic cooperation with ASEM, Vietnam has affirmed its great potentials for the cooperation. European investors can find various opportunities to do business in Vietnam. During the forum, participants also highly appreciated the Vietnamese government’s solutions to economic challenges. Vietnam’s key ASEM partners like India noted that Vietnam is an attractive market for them.
Additionally, representatives from ASEM companies and governments discussed measures to intensify their cooperation. One of the top priorities for this is expanding bilateral and multi-lateral visa exemption to promote trade, investment and tourism ties among ASEM countries. They also mentioned influences caused by the world economic downturn on ASEM firms and economies and post-crisis financial polices. Several attendant put forward solutions to help developing countries, including Vietnam, reduce difficulties due to inequality in trade ties such as quota policies, tariff barriers, (quota), General Preferential System (GPS), anti-dumping laws and roles in international financial and banking organisations.
At the end of the meeting, Associate. Prof. Dr. Le Danh Vinh hoped that the event will help contribute to the success of the forthcoming ASEM Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Hanoi. It is expected to be a driving force to strengthen the ASEM cooperation.
Thanh Thao
Vietnamese
