Participants in the workshop ‘Assembly of Associations of Vietnamese Enterprises’ agreed that the ‘Vietnamese use Vietnamese goods’ campaign launched recently has not yet paid off as expected for lack of cooperation among local businesses.

Bui Van Quan, Chairman of the Hanoi Association of Young Entrepreneurs, said local businesses have encountered huge difficulties in accessing the potentially strong domestic market with an 80 million population. He attributed this to small scale of enterprises, weak trademarks, and poor designs.

Also, there has been a loose conjunction between local manufacturers and distributors, which already affects the understanding of consumer demand and weakens Vietnamese businesses’ competitiveness in the face of much stronger foreign rivals, according to Vu Tien Loc, Chairman of the VCCI.

Nguyen Tuan Hai, Vice Chairman of the Hanoi Business Association, suggested that businesses build an ‘internal’ market for them to consume each other’s goods, which he said would have a double benefit. “In that case, businesses would cooperate not only as buyers but also as each other’s investors,” he said. Simply, they can sell or buy a kind of product together to gain advantages from large-scale operations such as lower prices and lower costs for marketing and sales.

Hapro Corporation Director General Tran Manh Canh said Hapro has 30 affiliate enterprises with 7,000 workers. This model of conjunction, he stressed, has helped the members increase their market shares, step up production, reduce the pressure of competition, and strengthen links between producers and distributors.

Mr Canh proposed that the State introduce a policy to assist enterprises in developing distribution systems and infrastructure to facilitate the flow of goods to rural areas. Once this is achieved, people will access goods more easily while enterprises could reduce their transport costs and provide more jobs for rural workers.