On the occasion of 6 months since Vietnam’s WTO accession, Ms Pham Chi Lan who is the former Vice-chairman of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and a member of Research Department of Prime Minister had a talk to the e-newspaper of the Viet Nam Communist Party (CPV).

Reporter (R): Would you like sharing your feelings when our nation became the 150th member of WTO?

Recently, the whole country has been happily welcoming Vietnam’s WTO accession. The Party and the State drew up the policies and solutions to well seize the opportunities and to overcome the difficulties in becoming a member of the organization to catch up with others so that our economy can develop and integrate more tightly, more quickly and more sustainably. Ministry of Politics, the Executive Committee of Central Party, National Assembly, and the State have taken a series of necessary action, set out the guideline, drawn up the detailed action programs and greatly important resolutions, guided the industries, levels, locals to seize the opportunities, take on the challenges, and materialize the economic-social goals of the country.

Never before have we had such great opportunity to accelerate the reform suitable to international commitments, push up the completion of communist-oriented market economic institution. When facing new challenges, we changed development strategies to adapt ourselves to new requirements and had practical and effective action such as in infrastructure developing, human resource educating and training, civil material and mental living standard enforcing.

R: Those are your macro feelings. In terms of micro feelings, what do you think are the clearest changes?

There are also sweeping changes in terms of ministries, industries and locals. All the levels and industries have carried the revision of their own programs, their current strategies, and Vietnam’s agreements with WTO to adjust and reorganize the strategies so that they are more suitable to the new setting. I think it is the change in economic thinking to bottom out of the standstill and to actively integration. The locals are all highly determined to improve their trade environment to better seize the business opportunities, cooperate closely with the related locals. With regard to businesses and the people, there is ebullient working environment in Vietnamese businesses. Most of the enterprises have been preparing and are now trying to catch the opportunities, rearrange their operation to overcome the heavier challenges on the way to integration. With such preparation, in the last 6 months, we have in fact done quite many things. We are increasingly confident and more willing to the new challenges and opportunities from WTO.

R: Vietnam is now active on the way to integration. Would you please say in details our methods aiming to make challenges opportunities for development?

There are two aspects in international activities that are the worthiest to care about. First of all, the Government has opened a series of important negotiations with relating organization as well as some countries having strategic position in the economic relation to Vietnam. We are now positively preparing for the Doha Round when it restarts, negotiating in the areas such as in ASEAN, APEC, ASEM, and even in the alignments of ASEAN with other countries.

We actively started the extremely important bilateral negotiation with the related partners to enhance economic relation such as the discussing the agreement of economic partner with Japan, Frame agreement on trade and investment with the United States of America, starting up the negotiation round on free trade with Korea, negotiation with European Union (EU), China, Chile and so on. We did so in order to fully exploit the new opportunities as a member of WTO which will surely firstly bring Vietnam a better position in international table, in international trading relation and economic alignment and secondly help us take full advantages of the trade opportunities that brought about by international market and the increasing care that countries take of Vietnam.

Secondly, foreign investments are now increasing obviously. Never before has investing environment into Vietnam been so ebullient. A series of important investors from Japan, some countries in European Union, the United States, and Korea and so on all claim to have new investment waves into Vietnam.

R: And is it true that the investment waves are now traveling into Vietnam?

Yes, that’s it. The giant in the information technology industry, Intel, has entered and raised its registered capital from 300 million US dollars to 1 billion US dollars right at the time Vietnam joins WTO. The capital investors who usually go with Intel when Intel invests in some places are now showing their concerns for investing in Vietnam. And Japan investors are now entering Vietnam fast, among whom are those considering Vietnam the first class destination for their investing plans. Korea and Taiwan of China are having unprecedented major projects. The quality of the investment is considerably worth when we have hi-tech investing projects. We have been spending tens of years canvassing hard without result. Now that Vietnam has become a WTO member, hi-tech projects have come to Vietnam and open the country’s new developing period, the period of pushing up industrialization and modernization. In addition, we have other investing projects with the aim to produce important materials in the fields of steel, petroleum, electric power, and additional industries development.

R: Would you mind telling us some international aids to Vietnam’s WTO accession?

Right before Vietnam’s WTO accession, many foreign organizations had offered and started some programs to help Vietnam to raise the awareness and to have the necessary adjustments to suit WTO. We have to mention the extreme importance of Multilateral Trade Assistance Project (MUTRAP) of European Union. During the first stage, this project had been helping Vietnam a lot in integration and negotiation to join WTO. In the current second stage, this project has been helping Vietnam popularizing WTO to organs, locals, members of people, and new elected to the Assembly. The Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) have started up the program called “Beyond WTO” helping Vietnam implementing the WTO commitments and seize the opportunities better. No matter how important the outsides aids are, however, they are not as important as the inside activities. It is pleasant that related organs in the country have been trying their best to bring WTO closer to organs, people, and enterprises. What we have done is obviously huge but still takes a small proportion to the current demands. I hope that in the future, there will be more activities carried out wider and deeper so that the people can fully understand WTO.

R: Thank you for attending our interview.