South African president talks investment at forum

HCM CITY — South Africa’s lack of investment in Viet Nam is not due to disinterest but a lack of knowledge of the market, according to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who visited HCM City yesterday.
Mbeki answered questions from business representatives at the South Africa-Viet Nam Business Forum, saying that South Africa needed to look at Viet Nam more closely to learn more about the country.
According to the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), the first South African investment project in Viet Nam, a US$22.5 million brewery joint venture, was licensed by the local authority in early 2006.
The director of VCCI, Vo Tan Thanh, said South Africa was Viet Nam’s biggest market in Africa, with export turnover from Viet Nam to South Africa rising from $15.5 million in 2002 to $56.8 million in 2004, to $101 million last year. The latter figure accounts for 17 per cent of Viet Nam’s total export to the African continent.
Viet Nam exports rice, textile and garment products, footwear, coffee, rubber, electrical and electronic products, wood products and foodstuffs to Africa.
Thanh said the trade agreement signed by the two governments in 2000 and the co-operation agreement signed between the chambers of commerce and industry from the two countries four years later became tools to promote business and investment between Viet Nam and South Africa. Two-way trade between the two countries rose from $20 million in 1999 to $155 million last year.
Covering 1.2 million square kilometres with a population of 45 million, South Africa is the best-developed nation in Africa and has paved the way for the development of all 14 states in the South Africa Development Community (SADC).
Dr. Rob Davies, deputy minister for Trade and Industry of South Africa, said his country was calling for investment in the sectors of textiles and garments, footwear, mining and metallurgy, transportation, machinery and equipment manufacturing, and film production industry.
He said South Africa sells to Viet Nam steel, aluminum and aluminum products, fibres, boilers and machinery, tobacco and tobacco products, with total export of $48 million in 2006. "We expect that we shall import more agricultural products from Viet Nam," said Davies.
President Mbeki said there would also be possibilities in the tourism sector of Viet Nam and encouraged Viet Nam Airlines to open flights to South Africa.
Held by the South Africa Department of Trade and Industry, the South African Embassy in Viet Nam and VCCI, the forum was attended by representatives of 18 South African companies and some 100 Vietnamese enterprises. —VNS