Ambassador of Vietnam to Pakistan Nguyen Tien Phong Wednesday said that Vietnam’s turnover in the first 10 months of 2022 was $675 billion with imports of $333 billion and exports $342 billion, therefore, Pakistan has great scope to enhance its trade and exports with Vietnam.
He said that Vietnam was importing many products including cotton yarn, medicines, surgical instruments, leather products, fabrics, chemicals, meat and mutton products, pet food, fertilizers and Pakistan should enhance exports of these products to Vietnam to take the bilateral trade to over $1 billion. He said that Pakistan has a talented workforce in IT and software field and Vietnam has good demand for these professionals, so Pakistan can increase the export of its IT manpower to Vietnam.
He said this while addressing the business community during his visit to Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI).
The Vietnam Ambassador said that ICCI should form a delegation for Vietnam and he would fully support in making its visit successful. He said that exchange of trade delegations is important to explore new avenues of mutual cooperation.
He termed consistency, continuity and stability as key requirements for Pakistan to attract foreign investment from Vietnam, ASEAN and other countries.
He appreciated the ICCI plan for organizing Pak-ASEAN Forum and assured that he would fully support it.
Speaking at the occasion, Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari, President ICCI said that Pakistan and Vietnam were enjoying cordial relations, but their bilateral trade was just around US$ 700 million in 2021, which was far below their actual potential.
He said that the main reason of low trade was the lack of awareness about business opportunities between the enterprises of both countries. He stressed for promoting strong business linkages between the private sectors of both countries in order to explore all untapped areas of mutual cooperation in order to make significant growth in trade volume.—APP
