Vietnam holds conference on facilitating export to Russia

A conference on supporting Vietnamese companies to boost exports to Russian market opened in Vietnam's southern Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Nguyen Ngoc Quan, a senior official from the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade, said at the conference that Vietnam and Russia have cooperated in areas including trade, manufacturing, transport equipment, energy, metallurgy and mining among others.

Vietnam will strengthen bilateral trade between Vietnam and Russia by holding seminars, talks and conferences to exchange information between the two countries' localities and companies and building financial supporting policies for trade promotion into Russian market.

Representatives from Vietnamese companies said at the conference that they valued the Russian market. However, the market contains some risks for companies including difficulties in ways of payment, tariff and non-tariff barriers, said the report.

In the past three years, Vietnam-Russia bilateral trade turnover was averaged at 1.8 billion U.S. dollars a year, said the report.

The two countries' trade turnover is expected to hit three billion U.S. dollars in 2012, according to the ministry.

Vietnam's major export products to Russian market include garment and textile, footwear, agricultural products, seafood and handicrafts.
(Source:xinhua)