Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)

The Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Department of European – American Markets held a trade cooperation forum with Eurasian partners both online and offline on December 22.

Speaking at the event, Director of the department Ta Hoang Linh described Eurasia as a huge market with 28 countries which are home to a population of over 410 million people and a gross domestic product of over 3.3 trillion USD.

Despite COVID-19 pandemic, two-way trade between Vietnam and Eurasia still hit 12.7 billion USD in 11 months of this year, up 13.1 percent annually. Of the figure, 8.6 billion USD was Vietnam’s export which remained modest compared to their import demand of more than 1.34 trillion USD, or only 0.66 percent of the market share, showing that room for Vietnam’s exports remains huge.

As of the late November, 18 out of 28 regional countries invested in 319 projects worth nearly 1.78 billion USD in Vietnam, or 0.44 percent of the total foreign direct investment in the country.

Meanwhile, Vietnam poured around 2.82 billion USD in 37 projects in nine regional nations as of the late September. Russia was the biggest recipient of Vietnamese investment with 15 projects valued at 2.8 billion USD.

Several speakers pointed out the benefit of goods transportation via Asia-Europe railway route and seaports in Eastern Europe such as Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania and shared information about e-commerce sites in these markets to help Vietnamese firms seek export opportunities.

Questions regarding foreign countries’ import and investment attraction policies were answered at the event. Market demands and opportunities from free trade agreements were also updated.

Linh affirmed that the ministry will continue partnering with business community to boost trade and investment activities between Vietnam and Europe-America and Asia-Europe in particular./.