Following the results of the social and economic cooperation programme between Ho Chi Minh City and Southeast and Southwest provinces forged more than one year ago, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Trade and Industry continued to sign new trade agreements with the Departments of Industry and Trade of seven Southeast provinces and 13 Southwest provinces and cities.
Forming product chain links
Ms Le Ngoc Dao, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Industry and Trade, said the trade cooperation programme focused on the four following fields: Supporting, providing and exchanging information and experience on State trade management; coordinating the organisation of trade promotion and investment link programmes, supporting HCM City-based businesses to invest in animal husbandry and cultivation projects in provinces and cities, ensuring a stable supply of goods for HCM City market and helping cooperating localities to develop modern distribution networks and bring the goods into HCM City’s distribution system; strengthening inspection and control of the circulation of goods supplied by provinces and cities to HCM City, ensuring the origin of supplies and food safety; and joining and supporting the organisation of trade promotion activities, conferences, workshops and trade fairs.
In 2012 - the first year to implement the cooperation programme, HCM City gradually identified the strengths of each province and city to build goods supply and demand strategies, especially agricultural products and foodstuffs for the HCM City market. Specifically, the city cooperated with Dong Nai, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Long An, Tien Giang and Tay Ninh provinces on cattle meat, with Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Long An and Tay Ninh provinces on poultry meat, with Dong Nai, Long An, Tien Giang, Kien Giang, An Giang and Dong Thap provinces on eggs, and with Lam Dong, Long An and Tien Giang provinces on vegetables. In addition, HCM City has also identified the supply capacities of each locality and region in order to provide support and seek output markets for handicraft villages.
Currently, provinces and cities cooperating with HCM City-based businesses are supplying about 50 per cent of their outputs. Some provinces with specialised agricultural cultivation and livestock husbandry like Dong Nai and Lam Dong supply 70 per cent of their total production output to HCM City. Each day, the city consumes 1,000 - 1,100 tonnes of meat, including imported frozen items, and about 3 - 3.5 million poultry eggs. Currently, the city’s agriculture is able to meet only about 15 - 20 per cent of the demand and the rest must be made up with supplies from other provinces and imports.
From this cooperation programme, the provinces and cities introduced to HCM City-based companies suitable locations to base production projects and build distribution systems. Up to now, distribution companies like Saigon Co-op, Vinatex and Fahasa have supermarkets in all 20 Southeast and Southeast provinces and cities, and study the development of convenience store chains in these localities.
Towards product branding
The provinces and cities play an important role in supplying goods to the HCM City market. In turn, the city has become the largest consumer of agricultural products. It is said that the cooperation programme between HCM City and partner provinces and cities is successful but it also contains certain limitations. Mr Nguyen Phuoc Trung, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said if we review the four contents of cooperation, the city only does well on the two first contents. Meanwhile, the central content of the cooperation programme is to seek optimal solutions for HCM City-based enterprises to purchase agricultural products from cooperating provinces and cities for preliminary processing to supply domestic and export markets. The provinces and cities will also facilitate the city’s enterprises to attain sustainable development.
As the orchestrator of the cooperation programme, Ms Nguyen Thi Hong, Vice Chair of the HCM City People's Committee, said that the span of one year is not enough to make accurate assessments on pluses and minuses. However, with the initial results achieved, the trade cooperation programme between HCM City and the provinces and cities is very important and very meaningful. It facilitates HCM City businesses to form cooperation relationships and joint ventures to invest in supply sources for the city’s market, enables them to build a closed production - distribution process and move towards sustainable development. Through the programme, functional agencies will have the chance to exchange and learn from experience in various aspects to complete their management apparatus.
Drawing experience from the pros and cons of the past year, HCM City will continue to implement the well-focused programme in 2013 and coordinate with partner localities to tap their advantages to a maximum. To do this, Ms Hong requested the city’s Department of Industry and Trade and functional departments carry out four contents of the cooperation programme. They are urged to increase surveys, exchange information, goods and technology concerning crop and livestock to make high-quality products, organise rotational seminars on the construction of commodity exchange models, safe markets and distribution channels with the aim of building up brand names for agricultural products and specialties of each locality and region to boost domestic consumption and export.
"The trade cooperation programme between HCM City and 20 provinces and cities will provide a platform to support enterprises to gradually improve investment scale and build closed product supply and distribution processes to reduce intermediary stages to reduce product costs - a foundation for HCM City to implement its price stabilisation programme,” said Ms Hong.
G.P
Vietnamese
