A seminar entitled ‘ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) - Opportunities and Challenges for Small and Medium-sized Businesses’ took place in Da Nang on Tuesday. 

Organised by the Da Nang Trade Promotion Centre, the event aimed to provide basic AEC-related information for local businesses and cooperatives, as well as introduce them to the opportunities and challenges which will arise when AEC is established later this year.

In particular, the establishment of AEC will create a single regional common market of ASEAN countries with over 600 million people in total and a total regional GDP of around 2,500 billion USD per year.  Local businesses will face fierce competition from their foreign rivals in such aspects as technology and human resources. 

The city’s economic experts suggested that local businesses should develop suitable strategies in order to ensure their sustainable development.  In addition, they also proposed that the city authorities should take more effective measures to help local small and medium-sized businesses enhance their integration into the competitive ASEAN market.