A Deserved Leader to Promote Trade and Investment in Binh Thuan

When Vietnam adopted the market-oriented economy, many opportunities have opened to our nation. Enterprises are quite free to expose themselves to outsiders but they will encounter more difficulties if there are no business assistance centres which seek business and investment opportunities for enterprises through exhibitions and trade fairs in Vietnam and other nations. Last year was seen as a successful year as many domestic and international investors kicked off their projects in Binh Thuan, including a tourism project by Delta-Valley Co., Ltd, a seafood processing project by Ky Lan Company and industrial manufacturing project by Bernecker. The success partially came from the contributions of the Binh Thuan Investment, Trade, Investment Promotion and Business Assistance Centre.

In 2008, the centre launched many business assistance programmes and counselled the provincial authorities. It organised an investment, trade and tourism promotion delegation to Osaka and Tokyo (Japan) in March 2008, and served provincial authorities to attend the tourist real estate forum in Ho Chi Minh City.

The centre summarises list of projects and central and provincial investment policies and conducts research on investment licensing procedures to assist investors in the province. Besides, the centre also successfully held many trade fairs and exhibitions in Binh Thuan province, organised Binh Thuan booths at the “Vietnam - WTO Integration” Trade Fair in January 2008, the “Hanoi International Trade Fair 2008” in Hanoi in October 2008, Vietnam International Agriculture Trade Fair in Ho Chi Minh City in November 2008 and many other events. Through national and international exhibitions and trade fairs, the centre has helped enterprises to popularise their products and trademarks, find business partners, and explore and expand markets.

To assist local enterprises to raise awareness of exploiting domestic and international information and access market information quickly and effectively, the centre has launched many human resource training and development programmes for small and medium enterprises. Remarkably, it collaborated with the “Start and Improve Your Business” programme (SIYB-VIE/98/M02/SID) funded by SIDA-ILO and VCCI-HCM to organise three training courses for 90 individual and household business leaders. It also joined hands with Business Edge and southern universities to hold 10 business administration courses for 308 trainees.

To help local businesses to operate better in the international economic integration period, the centre collaborated with the General Department of Taxation, the Business Administration Institute and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) to hold many training courses on value-added tax, corporate income tax, global business strategy and others. To update provincial and central policies, the centre worked with the Small and Business Enterprise Development Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment to establish and operate the business assistance chamber in Binh Thuan and upgraded its website to serve information demand of domestic and international businesses and investors.

Despite encountering difficulties, the centre has effectively organised investment, trade and tourism promotion and business assistance activities with higher quality and efficiency. Local companies are paying more attention to their popularity expansion through international and domestic exhibitions, trade fairs and conferences.

Mr Nguyen Huu Danh, Director of the centre, said, “The effort of the centre’s staff has brought in many positive results for enterprises although they met with certain difficulties, especially in calling investment to tap local potentialities and advantages.” Therefore, in the coming time, the centre will approach potential destinations like Russia and South Korea while intensifying its participation at national investment promotion programmes to attract domestic and international investors in Binh Thuan. It will focus on improving quality and efficiency of consulting activities and assist investors with procedures to execute their projects, providing more market and business information to enterprises to scale up production, expand export markets and attract more tourists. At the same time, it will work up with central and provincial business support organisations to launch training courses on corporate competition and business administrative improvement in the international economic integration process.