There remains room for Vietnam and Hong Kong (China) to cooperate in a range of fields from trade and investment to services, finance and logistics, heard the Vietnam-Hong Kong Business & Investment Matching held in Ho Chi Minh City on November 20.

The event was jointly organised by the Institute for Economics and Trade Development (IETD) in collaboration with the Young Executives Club of the Hong Kong General Committee of Commerce (HKGCC) and the Vietnam Trade Office in Hong Kong.

Nguyen Van Quan, Chairman of the IETD’s Board of Management, said that trade exchange between Vietnam and Hong Kong is growing over 10% a year. Vietnam exported goods worth 10 billion USD to Hong Kong last year and imported commodities worth 1.78 billion USD from Hong Kong, an year-on-year increase of 19.8%.

Regarding investment, Hong Kong is currently the 5th largest foreign investor in Vietnam, with 2,164 projects capitalised at nearly 29.5 billion USD, focusing on processing and manufacturing industry, real estate, and electricity, gas and water production and distribution.

According to Quan, Hong Kong is also a trade and tourism hub and a major regional transit centre, and it is considered a very potential market for Vietnamese food, so opportunities for cooperation and business investment of Vietnamese enterprises in Hong Kong are huge.

Bui Dang Dung, former Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly’s Finance-Budget Committee, said Vietnam is a developing open economy and one of the most actively integrating economies in the region. It is fully converging the factors that international investors in general and Hong Kong in particular are interested in, such as politic stability, wide market and abundant human resources. Meanwhile, Hong Kong, with its strength as a financial and banking centre of the region, can connect Vietnam with the region and with major European and American countries, especially in the development of science-technology, innovation, investment cooperation, finance, trade and logistics.

Edmond Yue, a HKGCC member, said the connection of Vietnam and Hong Kong creates good opportunities for prosperous development, adding Hong Kong investors consider Vietnam an attractive and vibrant market in the region.

Hong Kong businesses are increasingly interested in investment and trade cooperation with Vietnam, Yue said, elaborating that at the forum, they want to discuss and visit Vietnamese manufacturing plants and projects that are calling for investment to promote cooperation opportunities.

VNA