The official establishment of the Association of South-East Asian Nations Economic Community (AEC) on 31 December 2015 will bring opportunities and challenges to Vietnamese businesses in general, and those from Da Nang in particular.  Domestic businesses are worrying about whether their products will be less competitive than those made in Thailand, Singapore and other ASEAN member nations. 

So far, over 80% of the city’s businesses have yet to become fully aware of both the opportunities and the challenges which will arise when the AEC is founded.   Meanwhile, the city is not seeing enough active involvement of local business associations in providing support activities, legal consultancy, and other services for their members.  Generally, the role of these associations has yet to be promoted effectively in the current context of global integration. 

Therefore, most of the associations’ members have yet to access useful information about international trade regulations as well as ways to improve their competitive capacities against their foreign rivals.  In particular, many local businesses have faced many difficulties in settling international trade disputes by themselves without any support from these associations.  In addition, the number of trade promotion activities has been modest.

Workers at a local textiles and garments company

To solve these problems, the Deputy Director of the city’s branch of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), Mr Nguyen Dien, recently stressed the urgency for local businesses to learn more about AEC-related information as well as establish their representative offices in their regional consumer markets.  These actions will help them to further promote cooperative ties with their foreign partners, especially those from other ASEAN member nations. 

He also suggested that local businesses should take the initiative and pay even more visits to other ASEAN member nations in order to learn about their business environments and seek cooperation opportunities.  In addition, greater focus should be given to Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and northeast Thailand.  Furthermore, Mr Dien asked the local business associations to widely publicise AEC-related information to their members, as well as to seek more assistance from diplomatic agencies and the city’s branch of VCCI.