VNBusinessNews – The success of a major Indian trade and investment summit in HCMC will pave the way for India-Vietnam relations to thrive in years to come, said the secretary general of the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC).

Rajeev Singh told the Daily after the ASEAN Northeastern India Investment and Trade Opportunities Summit that what achieved during the three-day event would support stronger cooperation in different fields between the two countries.

Singh told the ending session of the summit in HCMC on Saturday that the event attracted over 200 delegates from Vietnam, a number that was much higher than projected.

Singh said at least seven memoranda of understanding (MOU) were inked by businesses from India’s Northeastern region and local counterparts and foreign-invested companies operating in diverse scopes of business in Vietnam.

The number of deals sealed was encouraging, Nguyen Anh Ngoc, deputy director of the HCMC Investment and Trade Promotion Center, told the Daily before a dinner hosted by Indian consul general Jitendra Nath Misra on Saturday to review the summit and for Indian officials and businesses to further discuss with their Vietnamese counterparts about topics of interest.

Singh said Vietnamese companies had not known about the opportunities in India and that they were able to buy quality goods made in India at lower prices than from other markets.

“Vietnamese companies know India in terms of New Delhi and Bombay. However, India is large and the Northeast region has much to offer,” Singh said. He called for both Indian and Vietnamese businesses to interact more.

Indian and Vietnamese companies can cooperate in tourism, infrastructure, food processing, agriculture and other scopes of business that the two sides were strong.

Shri Congrad Sangma, minister of tourism in India’s northeastern Meghalaya state, recommended that Indian and Vietnamese travel agencies work on offering package tours that combine attractions in both countries to attract holidaymakers from Europe and elsewhere.

Singh of the ICC confirmed that Indian companies’ keen interest in doing business in Vietnam and with Vietnamese counterparts, and this was proved by a strong increase in trade over the past years.

Singh said India and Vietnam had aimed for the bilateral trade of US$2 billion by 2010, but this target had already realized. “We are very encouraged by that. This is why we think that should come to this emerging market.”

Vo Tan Thanh, general director of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce (VCCI) in HCMC, said two-way trade between Vietnam and India reached some US$2.5 billion last year. He added two-way trade growth in 2007-2008 was 50-60%.

Thanh said Vietnam-India ties had expanded strongly, particularly since the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s visit to India in 2007 and Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil’s trip to Vietnam in 2008.

Thanh told the closing session India had increased investment in Vietnam, especially since 2007, and had appeared on the list of top foreign investors in Vietnam.

Dhananjay Kumar, chairman of Incham Vietnam, said though the summit ended, it was the beginning of a new journey of better business relations between not only Vietnam and India but also between ASEAN and India.

The closing session also touched on the important role of India and Vietnam in fostering the integration of ASEAN, a major partner that the south Asian country wants to tighten ties with.

Sunarmin Sunggono, acting consul general of Indonesia, told the ending session that India’s trade with ASEAN was US$40 billion with the goal of increasing to US$50 billion by 2010.

In August 2008, India and ASEAN concluded negotiations on a “trade in goods” agreement with an aim to form a free trade area encompassing 1.7 billion people and registering a combined gross domestic product value of US$2.3 trillion. (SGT)