As part of their ongoing working visit to Europe, a group of Da Nang’s leaders, led by municipal Party Committee Nguyen Xuan Anh, recently met with Viet Nam’s Honorary Consul in Turin, Italy, Ms Sandra Scagliotti, and the leaders of the Chamber of Commerce Italy-Viet Nam (CCIV).

The Da Nang leaders with Ms Scagliotti (3rd right), and others from Viet Nam’s Honorary Consulate in Turin

The Da Nang leaders asked Ms Scagliotti and the CCIV leaders to help Da Nang to attract even more Italian investors in future years.

In reply, Ms Scagliotti remarked that the EU-Viet Nam free trade agreement now provides a big opportunity for businesses from Da Nang, and those from Viet Nam as a whole, to access the European markets, including Italy. 

She also highly appreciated the great potential for the development of Da Nang’s tourism and services, and she vowed to deepen the bilateral friendship, cooperative ties, and trade and cultural exchanges between Turin and Da Nang in the years ahead.

The Da Nang delegation also had a working session with representatives from the Veneto Foreign Trade Centre.

A representative from the Centre’s International Marketing Department briefed the Da Nang guests on the Veneto region’s spearhead economic sectors which are tourism, exports, agriculture, research and hi-tech industries.  The region’s major exports include textiles, timber and mechanical products.

The Da Nang leaders highlighted the many similarities between the economic structures of Veneto and Da Nang, and their great cooperation potential in trade, hi-tech and tourism.  They also pledged that the Da Nang authorities would create an open investment environment for Italian investors. 

In particular, it was suggested that the 2 sides should foster bilateral exchanges of information, experiences and delegations in a bid to open up more bilateral trade and investment cooperation opportunities in the near future.

During their reception for the Da Nang guests, the leaders of the Venezia Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Venezia Businesses’ Association in the Veneto region remarked that the Viet Nam-Italy bilateral relationship has been promoted well over recent years.  In particular, this positive sign can be mainly attributed to the signing of the Joint Declaration on establishing the Viet Nam-Italy strategic partnership in 2013, and action plans to realise the strategic partnership over the 2017 - 2018 period.

The leaders of these Italian organisations noted that Venezia would send delegations of investors to Da Nang in order to learn more about its business environment.  Their focus will be on those aspects in which Viet Nam is now appealing for more Italian investment inflows.  Included are mechanical manufacturing, textiles and garments, footwear, and wood and food processing.  Also, Venezia investors showed their keen interest in cooperating with local small and medium-sized enterprises, and implementing transport and IT infrastructure projects in Da Nang under the public-private partnership (PPP) format.