"Vietnam has strategic partnerships with 17 countries, which have invested nearly $230 billion, contributing 50 percent of the country's trade turnover," he said at a recent seminar titled ‘Promoting trade and investment between Vietnam and strategic partners: Perspectives from business’.

The seminar sought to identify the obstacles to trade and investment cooperation between Vietnam and its strategic partners and propose solutions.

"These strategic partners play a crucial role in further enhancing foreign direct investment in Vietnam, creating more added value to help achieve sustainable development," Loc said.

Vietnam is working toward promoting its trade and investment ties with strategic partners such as the U.S, China, Japan, South Korea, countries that lead in terms of financial capacity, market size and technology, he said.

Loc proposed that the country's trade and investment promotion strategy should boost ties between ministries and promotion organizations, and offer incentives to digitization and small and medium enterprises.

However, there is still a wide gap between Vietnamese enterprises and their foreign partners in terms of development status and competitiveness, he noted.

Bjorn Koslowski, vice president of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, said many Vietnamese companies fail to meet requirements to join German supply chains, and therefore German companies find it hard to initiatively connect with them.

According to Virginia Foote, deputy head of AmCham Vietnam, many U.S companies seek to invest in Vietnam in several fields like energy and transport, and expect more improvement in both hard and soft infrastructure, along with Vietnamese goverment's policies. She also recommended that a non-cash economy and intellectual property protection should be enhanced.

Kim Han Yong, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Business in Vietnam, complained that many Korean companies have difficulties due to the rapid changes of Vietnamese ministries' policies and their scrapping of incentives.

"The investment policies for foreign companies in Vietnam should be consistent and stable to mitigate risks for investors and attract more FDI to Vietnam," he said.