Viet Nam has a huge opportunity to expand its market and strengthen its scale of information and technology (IT) co-operation with Japan, said Nguyen Doan Hung, chairman of the Viet Nam-Japan IT Cooperation Club (VJC) at a business forum in Ha Noi yesterday.

Twelve large Japanese companies, which handle advanced technology from the Kansai region, visited the capital city to seek trade opportunities at the business forum co-organised by the Trade Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the VJC under the Viet Nam Software and IT Services Association (Vinasa).

However, the chairman also emphasised that in order to seize the opportunities, Vietnamese enterprises must form a long-term strategy and invest in resources with a proficiency in Japanese language and the ability to satisfy the quality requirements of Japanese businesses.

Therefore, Vietnamese enterprises must not only be service providers, but also partners that develop together with Japanese firms when joining the market, Hung added.

Kobayashi Tatsuo, managing director of the Association of Information and Technology in the Kansai region, said Kansai's enterprises have showed great interest in Viet Nam.

Because Viet Nam and Japan are both participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the director expressed hopes that business between the two countries will expand and links between the firms will be boosted through the TPP.

"Our work is how to make the linkage strong," he said.

Japan is one of Viet Nam's three largest investors. Japanese enterprises registered to invest US$1.48 billion in Viet Nam by the end of October this year, said Do Kim Lang, deputy director of the Trade Promotion Agency.

The figure brought the total capital of Japanese investment into Viet Nam to nearly $39 billion.

With high economic growth in the region and close guidance from the Government, the business environment and investment in Viet Nam is continuing to improve in the direction of transparency, gradual simplification in administrative procedures, a consolidated financial and banking system, and improved infrastructure, said Lang.

The director also said that two-way trade turnover has continually grown each year.

The trade reached nearly $19 billion in the past eight months of this year. Of that amount, Viet Nam's exports to Japan hit $9.3 billion, mainly including textiles, crude oil and seafood.

VNS