Hanoi (VNA) - Italywants to boost its investment in Vietnam, focusing on providing more advancedtechnology equipment at competitive prices, while also supporting the country’ssustainable development with infrastructure and renewable energy projects, saidIvan Scalfarotto, Italian Deputy Minister of Economic Development.

He was speaking at the BusinessForum Italy Vietnam held for Vietnamese and Italian entrepreneurs to shareinvestment and cooperation opportunities in Vietnam.

The forum hosted 150 delegatesrepresenting some of Italy’s world-leading brands, in industries from renewableenergy and infrastructure to machinery and banks and entrepreneurialassociations. More than 200 Vietnamese counterparts also attended.

Italy is now Vietnam’seighth-largest trading partner in the world and the largest in the EU. Italianexports to Vietnam include machinery, leather products and electronics. Italianinvestment in Vietnam increased to 360 million USD in 2016 with 78 projectsimplemented.

Bilateral trade between Vietnamand Italy increased sharply from 1.13 billion USD in 2006 to 4.68billion USD in 2016. In the first eight months of this year, bilateral tradereached 2.9 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 9 percent.

Identifying economic cooperationas a priority pillar of bilateral cooperation, the two countries aim toincrease trade turnover to 6 billion USD in the 2017- 18 period. They hope toincrease Italy’s investment in Vietnam, especially in sectors in which Italy isstrong, creating favourable conditions for Vietnamese agriculture and seafoodproducts to access the Italian market.

“Italy does not only wish tocooperate in the area of trade as in previous years, but also wants to help Vietnamdevelop by supporting human resources training and capacity-building. To date,Italy has provided technological and financial support to establish a leatherand footwear technological, training and application centre in Binh Duong province,which opened in July this year,” Scalfarotto added.

As regards the obstacles ofItalian firms when doing business in Vietnam, Pham Hoang Hai, executivedirector of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (ICHAM), told VietnamNews that Italian firms are frustrated by the weakness of supportingindustries in Vietnam. Since most Italian firms doing business in Vietnam aresmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), they are in need of componentfactories or auxiliary suppliers in Vietnam and struggle to find thehigh-quality products they want to use.

However, Vietnam also offers manyfactors that reassure Italian investors of its strong potential, such as thestability of its policy system, an encouraging corporate tax system and workerswhose skills are flexible and transferable to a variety of tasks.

At the conference, two Memorandumof Understanding (MOUs) have been signed. One MOU is between the ConfidustriaMarmomacchine – an association of Italian stone and marble manufacturingcompanies—and the Vietnam Association for Building Materials and the Luc YenWhite Marble Association. The other is between the ICHAM and Vietnam’s GeneralDepartment of Customs.

This is the first time that ICHAMhas signed an agreement with Vietnam’s General Department of Customs aimed atlimiting trade fraud and smuggling, as well as guaranteeing that all productscoming from Italy to Vietnam are 100 percent made in Italy or 100 percentproduced by Italian companies, said Michele D’Ercole, chairman of ICHAM.

The event was organised by theItalian Trade Commission (ICE), the Italian Banks’ Association (ABI) and theItalian Confederation of Industry Associations (Confindustria), with supportfrom the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the Embassy ofItaly in Vietnam.-VNA