Benin
wants to strengthen investment and trade cooperation with Vietnam, an official
from the West African nation told a seminar held in HCM City on Sept. 28.
The seminar, organised by the Vietnam Trade
Promotion Agency's HCM City office, is attended by a visiting delegation of
ministerial officials from Benin.
Benin is a predominantly agricultural country,
with farming contributing 34 percent of its GDP, Sabi Boum Djoule, the legal
adviser to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said.
Its main export items are cotton, raw cashew
nut, rice, pineapple, and orange.
“Benin wants to learn from Vietnam food
processing and preservation, fruit-juice production, and cashew
processing," he said.
He called on Vietnamese companies to build
factories for processing cashew and mango and upgrade cotton-processing plants
in Benin, adding that his Government will back Vietnamese companies to make
bilateral economic relations more fruitful.
Benin is a promising market and possible
gateway to Africa for Vietnamese products, Ngo Van Roan, head of the Ministry
of Industry and Trade's Import-Export Department in HCM City, said.
Trade between the two countries had risen
significantly in the past few years to top 53 million USD last year.
In the first half of this year, it reached
46.7 million USD, with Benin’s exports accounting for 37.7 million USD, mainly
of cotton, cashew nut, and scrap iron.
Among Vietnam’s key exports to Benin are rice,
raw materials for tobacco production, and electronics, Roan said.
These figures indicated that the bilateral
trade potential remains largely untapped, mostly due to a lack of information
about each other's markets, geography and high transport costs, language
barrier, and payment issues, he said.
Roan said to overcome difficulties and enhance
bilateral trade, Vietnamese companies should focus more on trade promotion and
take part in exhibitions in Africa.
He also called on them to work directly with
Beninese companies to understand local consumers' needs.
Source: VNA
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