Businesses urged to have effective strategies as retail market opens

Hanoi (VNA) - Domestic businesses need to rapidly improve their
competitiveness and formulate suitable and effective business strategies as
the deadline for Vietnam to open its retail market under WTO commitments
looms, according to a senior government official.

Speaking at discussions regarding the opening of the distribution market,
which took place in Hanoi on October 31, Deputy Minister of Industry and
Trade Nguyen Cam Tu predicted that the opening of the retail market from
January 1, 2009 will create favourable conditions for many foreign
distributors who possess greater financial muscle and modern distribution
methods to penetrate deeper into the Vietnamese market, thus having the
knock-on effect of helping to develop domestic distribution systems.

However, domestic businesses will also face an increasing number of
difficulties and challenges as foreign groups will be permitted to establish
wholly foreign-invested companies, increase their investments and open new
branches and outlets in Vietnam .

With this in mind, Vietnam 's ministries, localities and enterprises
have spent a lot of time discussing a range of measures to improve the
competitiveness of domestic businesses and to prepare legal foundations for
the licensing of retail and wholesale establishments as well as strategies
to develop local distribution systems.

According to the MoIT, Vietnam 's retail market has developed rapidly
over recent years with total revenue reaching 44 billion USD in 2007, a 25
percent increase against the previous year. In the first ten months of
this year, this figure stood at 782 trillion VND (46 billion USD), up 30.7
percent compared with the same period last year.

Vietnam now has around 400 supermarkets, 60 trade centres and close
to 2,000 convenience stores. By 2010, the country expects to see the number
of supermarkets to increase by 62.5 percent and trade centres to increase by
150 percent.-Enditem