KARACHI, Oct 27: Vietnam Vice Minister of Trade, Do Nhu Dinh, has invited FPCCI delegation to Vietnam for talks with their counterparts and participation in major international exhibitions scheduled for coming April and October 2004 in Vietnam.

In a meeting with the FPCCI members on Monday, he expressed keen desire to promote joint ventures and bilateral trade with Pakistan’s private business sector.

The minister suggested the following measures to promote joint ventures and to increase the trade volume from the current meagre trade of $35 million: exchange of visits of senior businessmen and government officials, holding of trade exhibitions in each other’s country, regular business contacts between the trade associations and business community of both the countries and exchange of trade information between trade associations and entrepreneurs of Vietnam and Pakistan.

Do Nhu Dinh said that due to open and liberal investment policy Vietnam has been able to attract foreign investment of $40 billion. He said that the annual exports of Vietnam were $20 billion and imports were $24 billion. Vietnam exported textiles worth $3.1 billion, which mainly included garments, out of which exports to the US stood at $1.7 billion.

He said that his country mainly imported material for textile manufacturing including cotton, cotton yarn and textile machinery. He said that Vietnam had applied for membership of WTO in 2005 and if it got membership, Vietnam’s import tariff will be reduced to a range between zero to 5 per cent in 2006.

The FPCCI president, Riaz Tata suggested that Pakistan and Vietnam could profitably compliment each other’s trade and industrial capabilities by establishing joint ventures in many areas such as textile, food processing, automobiles and light engineering.

Vice president, Haroon Rashid drew attention to the difficulties being faced by Pakistani businessmen in getting visa for visiting Vietnam due to non-issuance of visa at the Embassy in Islamabad. The Vietnam’s minister assured FPCCI that he would take up this issue with his government to facilitate the issuance of visas.