Banana is packed at An Thai hi-tech agriculture area.
The newly-inked Vietnam-Korea Free Trade Agreement (VKFTA) will bring many opportunities for Vietnamese enterprises. For Binh Duong, the agreement will contribute to help local industry reach a rapid growth pace and develop agricultural sector.
Facilitating industry’s rapid growth
After over 2 years with 8 official rounds of negotiation, Vietnam and Korea agreed all contents of VKFTA. This agreement shows its overall level and assurance of benefit between the two sides.
The agreement includes 17 chapters, 208 articles, 15 appendixes and 1 deal. The provisions of the bilateral trade agreement cover the trade of commodities, services (including appendixes for telecommunications, finance and the movement of natural persons – a way through which services can be supplied trans-nationally), investment, intellectual property, measures for food safety and animal and plant quarantine, rule of origin, customs facilitation, trade remedies, technical barriers, e-commerce, competition, economic cooperation and legal system.
VKFTA is the first completed bilateral free trade agreement between Vietnam and its trade partners, that was put on the round table in 2014. The signing of the VKFTA will bring about positive impacts to the Vietnamese economy, such as an improved business environment, hence boosting the restructuring of the economy towards a sustainable, value-added growth. More transparent, comfortable investment conditions will lure more Korean investment into Vietnam, accompanied by Korea’s advanced technology and management expertise, and create opportunities of accessing a third markets. In addition, Korea pledges to help Vietnam with enhancing the ability in making policies and increasing its competitiveness in mutually interested areas like agriculture, aquaculture, electronic industry, refinery and auxiliary industry. Korea is one of Vietnam’s biggest export markets for products in the seafood, garment, footwear, agriculture and wooden furniture sectors. In turn, Vietnam imports mainly chemicals, garment input and equipments from Korea.
Pham Van Xo, chairman of Binh Duong Import-Export Association said that VKFTA is a good opportunity for Vietnam to export its staple products to Korea, especially farm produce, processing industry and more.
In Binh Duong, on report of the provincial department of Trade and Industry, in the first 4 months of this year the local export revenue was estimated at US$5.580bn, a 16.1% increase from the same period last year. Apparel and footwear are Binh Duong’s staple export items. In April alone, local apparel export revenue was estimated at US$149,400mn, a 2.4% rise from the same period of the past month and a 15% surge against the same period last year.
Meanwhile, footwear’s export turnover in April was at US$116.700mn, a 3.8% increase from the same period last year, accounting for a 8.6% rate of local export revenue.
Besides, also this month the local import revenue reached over US$1.213bn, a 5.4% increase from the last month. In the first 4 months of this year, local import turnover won US$4.882mn, a 16.4% rise from the same period last year.
More opportunities for agriculture
In Binh Duong, urban and hi-tech agriculture industry has gained breakthroughs. Many farmer households have applied technical advances into agricultural production, contributing to cut labor, production cost and more.
Especially, local farmers’ production capacity has been improved significantly. Many new tech-science advances have been applied into production, helping improve capacity and quality of products. Until now, nurslings with high capacity and quality have been planted across the province.
In addition, thanks to strong attraction of domestic and foreign investment capital for animal husbandry sector, output and quality of breeding of poultry and cattle have been improved significantly.
At present, Binh Duong has had 4 hi-tech agriculture areas including U&I Co.Ltd. (Unifarm)’s 411.75ha An Thai hi-tech agriculture area in An Thai commune, Phu Giao district; 89.95ha Tien Hung hi-tech agriculture area in Hieu Liem commune, North Tan Uyen district; 471.86ha hi-tech breeding area in Tan Hiep and Phuoc Sang communes; Ba Huan hi-tech chicken farm in Tan Uyen town.
Of these, An Thai hi-tech agriculture area has launched many high effective models of honeydew model bringing a VND1bn turnover per ha per crop; banana model creating VND600mnper ha per crop and more. An Thai hi-tech agriculture area’s banana product have been exported to Korea, Malaysia, Cambodia and Japan.
Unifarm’s projects has attracted strong attention of organizations, enterprises and individuals involving in agricultural industry. At present, numerous farms and households inside and outside of the province have asked for transferring technology from 2 models of honeydew and banana. Unifarm has transferred technology of growing banana for 2 farms in Dau Tieng and Ben Cat with the area of about 20ha.
Nguyen Tan Binh, director of the provincial department of Agriculture and Rural Development said that VKFTA creates a good signal of consumption marker development, helping local farmers increase income. Moreover, forming up hi-tech agriculture areas will facilitate Binh Duong farm produce’s development in Korean market.
Binh added that aside from local policies of investment attraction, Binh Duong is one of localities winning the biggest rubber growing area in Vietnam. Therefore, this agreement will lure more Korean enterprises to invest into Binh Duong. This will help improve efficiency of rubber tree in the coming time.
Reported by P.Le – Translated by A.C
