Many local enterprises do not know much about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the AEC free trade agreements (FTAs) that are expected to be signed this year.
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Many local enterprises are unaware of the TPP and AEC free trade agreements which are expected to help them integrate on global and regional scales. |
Adequate knowledge about these FTAs would help domestic firms in Vietnam prepare for business integration at a global and regional scale.
The Vietnam Chamber of Industry and Commerce (VCCI)'s survey for the provincial competitiveness index (PCI) 2015 reported that 30 percent of the interviewees among enterprises in Vietnam did not have enough information about Vietnam having negotiated to join the TPP agreement.
Of these, 31.5 percent were private enterprises and 29.8 percent were foreign-invested enterprises, said Dau Anh Tuan, the head of VCCI's legal department.
The survey also said domestic enterprises in Vietnam expected the State to support enterprises in drawing advantages from the TPP and solving difficulties after joining the TPP and the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), he said.
Tuan said enterprises did not have much information about the TPP and AEC so they needed guidance to prepare well for the impact stemming from the FTAs.
The AEC is expected to be formed this year, but 76 percent of Vietnam's enterprises have no information about the AEC, 94 percent of them had no knowledge of the AEC negotiation rounds and 63 percent said they did not know anything about the business opportunities or the challenges stemming from Vietnam joining the AEC, another survey said.
To Hoai Nam, Vice Chairman and General Director of the Vietnam's Small and Medium- sized Enterprises said Vietnam's enterprises were aware of the competitive abilities of large international enterprises, but they did not possess any knowledge about the competitive abilities of firms in the ASEAN region so they had not developed clear solutions to compete with these rivals.
Meanwhile, Nam said, about 10,000 enterprises from ASEAN, such as Singapore and Thailand, had already visited Vietnam this year for conducting market studies.
These regional enterprises had actively sought market information and a chance for entering Vietnam's market, which was considered a potential market, and they would not wait until the AEC was officially established at the end of this year, he said.
Tran Dinh Thien, Director of the Vietnam Economic Research Institute, was concerned that Vietnam had negotiated to sign several FTAs, but the local enterprises had low competitive abilities, poor national management ability and low labour productivity, compared with other enterprises in the region and the world.
VNA
