Avineesh Gupta, Walmart’s vice president, said the retail chain serves 240 million visitors at stores, supermarkets and websites in 19 countries and territories each week. In 2013, Walmart set up an office in HCM City, collecting goods in Vietnam for export.

“Vietnam is an important supply source for Walmart,” he said at a recent forum on exports. “We appreciate Vietnam’s workforce’s quality and Vietnamese enterprises that help export many products, contributing to the recovery of the world’s economy."

He said the potential of exporting durian, mango, coconut and other farm produce is great, and his retail chain wants to seek more supplies and have more stable sources.

General director of Central Retail Vietnam Olivier Langlet noted that in the last three decades, Vietnam has made considerable progress in processing raw materials. The domestic processing sector has improved, creating high-quality products meeting global demand. Central Retail is making big investments in the food sector in Vietnam.

Businesses now can receive support from the government of Vietnam and agencies, according to Yuichiro Shiotani, CEO of Aeon Topvalu Vietnam. This gives favorable conditions to enterprises to grow. The Japanese retail chain is promoting the export of Vietnam’s produce through its network of supermarkets in 14 countries.

As for textiles and garments, Lionel Adenot, CEO of Decathlon Vietnam, which has been in Vietnam since 2015, said Vietnam is the second largest global production base for the sports retailer.

Decathlon wants to seek more reliable suppliers in Vietnam, saying the retail chain is willing to cooperate with enterprises which can satisfy three requirements: digitizing production and business; improving efficiency in using local raw materials, making products and using energy; minimizing the impact on the environment, using renewables.

According to Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai, Vietnam had a prosperous year in 2023 with record high import-export turnover of $730.3 billion.

Vietnam’s import-export turnover in the first eight months of the year reached $435 billion, including $227.7 billion worth of export turnover. This helped Vietnam gain an export surplus of $20 billion.

Hai stressed that Vietnam is changing vigorously to become a global production center that provides the world with diverse products of competitive prices and high quality. 

Many retail groups and retail channels that pursue the strategy on diversifying products to ensure sustainable supplies have chosen Vietnam as a strategic point in their global supply chains.

The forum on export this year gathered many big retail groups in the world, including Aeon, Uniqlo, Amazon, Carrefour and Decathlon, and international buyers from 25 markets.

Tam An