With the population of 27.6 million people, Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is also the biggest crude oil exporter in the world and ranks at the first position in OPEC with 25% storage of the world’s crude oil. In 2006, its GDP increased by 5.9%, reaching approximately 366 billion US dollars; exports reached 204.5 billion US dollars and imports gained 64.16 billion US dollars; average income per capita is 13,800 US dollars.

Since the first establishment of diplomatic relations of the two nations at the end of 1999, commercial relation between Vietnam and Saudi Arabia has developed positively. Recently, bilateral trade has increased rapidly reaching over 100 million US dollars per year. In 2005, the bilateral trade turnover was 120 million US dollars, in which Vietnamese exports accounted for 30.5 million US dollars and its imports made up 89.5 million US dollars. In 2006, Vietnam exported 50.5 million US dollars and imported 100.6 million US dollars.

Key exporting articles of Vietnam to this market include garment (18.5 million US dollars), computers, electronic products and components (8.3 million US dollars), footwear (3.3 million US dollars), wood and wooden products (3.1 million US dollars), cashew (2.3 million US dollars), pepper (1.8 million US dollars), plastic products (1.0 million US dollars), and other products such as handbags, wallets, suitcases, hats, umbrellas, rice, tea, seafood, vegetables, pottery and china, coffee, rubber, bamboo and rattan products, etc. On the other hand, Vietnam imports include material of plastic (88.6 million US dollars), chemicals (1.9 million US dollars), chemical products (1.7 million US dollars), food for castle and processing materials (1.4 million US dollars), steel of all kinds (1.2 million US dollars), etc.

Saudi Arabia is a large market in Gulf region and each year it needs to import in bulk the articles that Vietnam is strong at such as garment, footwear, seafood, wooden products, agricultural produces (pepper, rice, tea, and cashew nuts), handicraft, computers and electronic components, and so on.

However, Saudi Arabia enterprises have little knowledge about Vietnamese market and enterprises, and vise versa. Beside the exchange of tangible goods, Saudi Arabia is a big potential capital market including investment, finance, banking, etc. and also has high demand for imported labor. There are about 7 million foreign labors working in some industries such as petroleum, services, construction, and house-helper. These are advantages of Saudi Arabia that Vietnam can intensively cooperate to call for investment and intensify exporting labor, for example. Some investing projects of Saudi Arabia into Vietnam is running effectively such as pre-engineered steel producing factory named Zamil Steel, and the entertainment area and top hotels Rafles Resort in Da Nang which are in bluiding progress.