Domestic businesses need to participate in TPP discussions

HA NOI (VNS)— Viet Nam’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should bring in a wave of investment similar to the one that occurred when the country joined the WTO, said an official from the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

Ngo Chung Khanh, deputy director of MoIT’s Multilateral Trade Policy Department told a conference yesterday in Ha Noi that participating in the TPP would give Viet Nam opportunities to access other markets.

The TPP would also help businesses export more goods, especially to the US market, make better use of the opportunities offered by the restructuring process and the trend of regional economic integration.

However, he acknowledged that entering the TPP would also create pressure on the open market and competition for Vietnamese businesses, in addition to heavily affecting sectors such as agriculture, industry and services.

Viet Nam also faced difficulties due to the limited human resources involved in the TPP negotiations and equally limited institutional capacity to implement its commitments.

According to Peter A. Petri from Brandeis University in the US, Viet Nam could see many benefits from the TPP pact, but would also face many new challenges.

Under the pact, the country would have to follow stricter rules about where products could come from and how the production process influenced the environment, he said.

Le Tien Truong, deputy general director of the Viet Nam Garment and Textile Group (Vinatex), said the domestic garment and textile industry saw deep integration into the global market as a positive signal for export growth, but echoed the other experts’ point that these opportunities came hand in hand with challenges.

The Vietnamese garment and textile industry needed a complete supply chain, he said, which was difficult to accomplish while the industry’s production of raw materials remained limited.— VNS