The conference was co-organised by the HCM City Department of Trade and Industry and the WTO Affairs Consultation Centre.

Speaking at the conference, Cao Thanh Diep, an official from the Ministry of Trade and Industry said although tariffs are not a large obstacle to Vietnamese products, non-tariff barriers and business methods remain issues of concern.

Vietnamese businesses, lacking in market information and affected by high transportation cost, still face certain difficulties in penetrating the Australian and New Zealand markets, which have strict requirements on packaging, labeling, quarantine, product and service quality and observance to intellectual property rights, Diep said.

However, according to the WTO Affairs Consultation Centre, Vietnamese businesses have step by step taken advantage of the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand free trade agreement. The country has seen trade growth in several export products including agricultural, seafood, textile and wood.

Chu Thang Trung, Deputy Head of the Asia-Pacific Market Department under the Ministry of Trade and Industry, suggested that businesses should study the markets and their demands more carefully, while improving products’ quality, approaching big distributors and the supermarket system, in order to strengthen position of Vietnamese products in the Australian and New Zealand markets