Will it help strengthen local products?
The Ministry of Industry and Trade is proposing a draft decree which will require all supermarkets to stock at least 30% products from Vietnamese small and medium companies, VietnamNet reports.
According to Vu Vinh Phu, a former deputy director of the Hanoi Trade Department, the regulation is necessary in order to protect Vietnamese goods from strong foreign competitors. Phu also said that in World Trade Organizations and other free-trade agreements, there is no specification on the proportion of Vietnamese and foreign goods in supermarkets and malls in Vietnam; thus the country should take the chance to give Vietnamese products a privilege.
There are two types of supermarkets here that should follow the regulation strictly. The first type includes companies with 100% Vietnamese investors and the second one includes Vietnamese supermarkets that have 30-65% of their shares held by foreign companies.
“There were supermarkets which received strong support from the state but they were sold to foreigners, such as Phu Thai, Fivimart, Citimart and Nguyen Kim. In these cases, we indirectly supported foreign businesses," Phu said.
As for foreign supermarkets, Phu said the only solution is to negotiate in order to include more Vietnamese products. However, bringing Vietnamese products to foreign supermarkets has proved to be a hard task because of high commission fees and additional fees charged by these foreign retailers.
[Photo via Walking Hanoi]
