Lotte Vietnam Shopping Co. Ltd. will spend about US$1 million buying around 200 Vietnamese products for export to South Korea this year.

Tran Thi Nghia, legal and public relations team leader at Lotte Vietnam Shopping Co. Ltd., gestures at a media briefing in HCMC yesterday while introducing Lotte’s plan to buy Vietnamese products for distribution in Korea.

The volume will be four times higher than that of last year when the company purchased 101 products worth US$250,000, the company’s legal and public relations team leader Tran Thi Nghia told a media briefing in HCMC on May 11.

Typical Vietnamese products will be on show at Lotte Mart Saigon South in HCMC’s District 7 from June 24 to 28.

Vietnamese goods are now on the shelves of 114 Lotte Mart supermarkets in Korea. Nghia said Lotte now runs ten supermarkets in Vietnam with domestically made products accounting for 95% and Korean products the remainder.

In addition to Korea, Lotte will buy Vietnamese goods for sale at Lotte Mart stores in Indonesia and China.

“Consumers in South Korea favor Vietnamese farm produce and bamboo and rattan products. Lotte Mart will assist Vietnam’s small and medium enterprises and farmers sell goods at Lotte Mart stores,” Nghia said. 

Nghia noted that Korean consumers care much about product designs and quality as well as food safety. Therefore, Vietnamese producers should attend to these issues if they want their products to go there. 

As for expansion plans in Vietnam, three more Lotte Mart supermarkets will be inaugurated in HCMC’s Go Vap District, Can Tho City and Nha Trang City this year.

Just last week, Vietnam and South Korea signed a bilateral free trade agreement in which the latter will open its doors wider for Vietnamese goods like seafood, vegetables, apparel, furniture and manufactured products.

Tran Quoc Cuong from the HCMC Investment and Trade Promotion Center (ITPC) said leaders of HCMC and representatives of more than

20 local enterprises would be visiting Korea from May 24 to 28 to promote trade and investments in the northeast Asian country.

Korea continued to lead in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam in the first four months of this year with pledges of US$909 million. Given the FTA signing, experts projected there would be a new wave of Korean investment in Vietnam in the coming time.