The Vietnam Cooperative Alliance has run a two-day training session to help the country’s co-ops access the European single market.
It is hoped the training, delivered in partnership with the provincial People’s Committee, will help co-ops take advantage of the 2019 EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).
This has paved the way for much greater export opportunities for Vietnamese businesses but, while navigating the EU’s complex web of taxes, standards, and regulations is straightforward for larger enterprises, it’s not so easy for smaller organisations – including co-operatives.
For Vietnam, this is a problem. It has more than 32,700 co-operatives, which play a significant role in the national economy – particularly in agriculture, which accounts for almost half of the country’s employment and 8.84% of GDP.
Its first co-ops were established in the 1950s, and the movement is supported by a range of laws which place them at the core of economic development strategy. However, many Vietnamese co-operatives are small-scale, lacking the capacity or tools to export to a territory as big as Europe.
At the workshop in Vietnam’s Ca Mau province, attendees explored opportunities for co-ops as well as the challenges of meeting the EU single market’s regulations. Alliance chair Cao Xuan Thu Van stressed that co-operatives must be given the technical knowledge, skills, and notably, digital tools in order to do so, stating: “The EVFTA has opened historic doors for Vietnamese products to enter one of the world’s most demanding and competitive markets.”
While public details on digital transformation remain scant, it seems that this was a key topic of discussion – linked to the Vietnamese government’s efforts to simplify administrative procedures for establishing co-ops through digitalisation. Huynh Chi Nguyen, vice chair of the Ca Mau People’s Committee, said the workshop focused on giving co-ops practical information and digital solutions with which they could optimise production and quality management in order to become competitive in Europe.
This was helped by the presence of industry experts from Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany, who shared key information on how Vietnamese co-ops could participate.
Hoang Van Tu, from Sustainable Food Systems Ireland, said: “Co-operative business models have undergone fundamental shifts in recent years, moving from primarily providing services to engaging directly in production, processing and distribution.”
Van Tu called for co-operatives in Vietnam to pursue a ‘dual transformation’ to modernise their operations using both green and digital technologies.
