Vietnam urged to boost bilateral trade, investment

Vietnam urged to boost bilateral trade, investment

Vietnamese investors have called on Laos and Vietnam to revise their policies to improve the efficiency of bilateral trade and investment relations, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported on Monday.

Chairman of the Association of Vietnamese Investors in Laos (AVIL), Mr Tran Bac Ha, made the statement at a recent seminar held in Binh Dinh province on economic cooperation between the south-central and central highlands provinces of Vietnam and the central and southern provinces of Laos, the agency reported, citing the Dau Tu (Vietnam Investment Review) newspaper.

Laos has so far granted investment licences to 413 Vietnamese projects worth US$5 billion. This has made Vietnam the second largest investor in Laos after China.

Vietnamese investors have disbursed US$1.5 billion of total investment capital to projects in Laos, according to Mr Ha, who is chairman of the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam.

Bilateral trade value between Vietnam and Laos in the first nine months of 2014 reached US$995 million, and bilateral trade is expected to reach US$1.4 billion for the entire year.

The association expects Vietnam’s total registered investment capital in Laos to reach US$5.8 billion next year and total trade value between the two countries to reach US$2 billion in 2015, according to the Thoi Bao Kinh Te Vietnam (Vietnam Economic Times) newspaper.

To achieve these targets, “the governments of Vietnam and Laos should team up with the government of Cambodia to build special economic cooperation among the three countries by 2020 and toward 2030, developing further comprehensive economic cooperation in the Indochina region,” Dau Tu quoted Mr Ha as saying.

“Laos and Vietnam should sign a bilateral trade agreement this year to create favourable conditions for promoting goods circulation and increasing total trade value between the two countries,” he added.

The association also suggested that Laos increase the percentage of foreign workers above the 10 percent limit set for each project because the skills of Lao workers have yet to satisfy demand, Mr Ha said, according to the VNA.
Laos amended its labour law in December last year, increasing the foreign-born percentage of a business’s workforce employed as manual labourers to 15 percent, up from 10 percent previously.

The amendment also increased the percentage of overseas knowledge-based personnel that can be hired to 25 percent of the workforce, up from 20 percent previously.

According to the VNA, Mr Ha also suggested that the governments of the two countries unify their procedures for granting licences, recording statistics, and the management of Vietnam’s projects in Laos, and simplify their customs procedures.

The two countries should also encourage investment to build infrastructure for trade activities via border gates such as transit warehouses, Mr Ha said.

Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment, Mr Nguyen Chi Dung, agreed with Mr Ha about the difficulties Vietnamese investors have faced.

Mr Dung said the two countries should sign a bilateral trade agreement as soon as possible to resolve difficulties in hiring workers, granting investment licences, and implementing customs procedures.

Laos and Vietnam should also have specific cooperation programmes to take full advantage of cordial relations between the two countries, he added. Mr Dung also suggested that the Lao government offer incentives to attract Vietnamese investment in difficult regions and large-scale projects.

Mr Ha said the governments of the two countries need to review Vietnamese-invested projects in Laos to provide needed support and help resolve the difficulties encountered by these projects. He suggested that the two countries’ enterprises should implement projects along their borders.

For those projects whose implementations were slow, Laos should revoke the investment licence and choose another eligible Vietnamese or Lao business operator to undertake the project, Mr Ha added.

vientiane times