Car maker Hyundai Motor Co. of the Republic of Korea (RoK) will set up a joint venture with Vietnam’s Thanh Cong group to boost sales in the emerging market, according to Yonhap news agency.

The RoK news agency quoted a statement of Hyundai as saying that the company and Thanh Cong Group signed an initial agreement to establish a sales joint venture that will be tasked with selling 100,000 vehicles in Vietnam by 2020.

For the whole of 2018, Hyundai's vehicle sales more than doubled to 55,924 units in the key Southeast Asian market compared with a year earlier. It ranked second in the local automobile market with a share of 19.4 percent after Toyota Motor Corp., the statement said.

Vietnam's automobile sector jumped 27 percent to 287,949 units last year from 226,120 in the previous year, it said.  

To help meet the sales goal, Hyundai said it will expand its plant in Vietnam to 100,000 units by 2020 from the current 60,000.-VNA