The Indian Business Chamber in Vietnam (Incham) will host a series of activities in the last quarter of this year in an effort to boost Indian business efficiency, strengthen the relationship with Vietnamese partners and improve corporate social responsibility in Vietnam.
They will likely include a seminar in the pharmaceutical industry and another in investment, some sports activities like a bowling competition, a blood donation camp, a charity event for needy Vietnamese people, and the annual Diwali Festival, Mohan Ramesh Anand, Incham Vice chairman, told Tuoi Tre.
Incham is also planning to open a book directory focusing on almost all business sectors in Vietnam for its Indian business community in Vietnam and join hands with state agencies including the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry to publish a guidebook to doing business in Vietnam for foreigners, he added.
In the first half of this year, Incham organized two business seminars on temporary developments in Vietnam legislation and Vietnam economic outlook, which have gathered a number of officials from central to municipal state agencies and experts including Andy Ho, chief investment officer of VinaCapital, Marc Townsend, managing director of CB Richard Ellis Vietnam, Tuyen Nguyen, investment officer of International Finance Corp, and Amit Arora, Vietnam’s country head of consumer banking at ANZ bank.
Vietnam is offering trade opportunities for Indian companies in many sectors including agro-food products, engineering, plastics, textile-garment-fashion, pharmaceutical, furnishing-handicrafts and art, electronics-telecoms, machinery-equipments, construction and service industries.
As of June 2011, India ranks 28th out of 93 foreign investors in Vietnam with 58 projects worth over $225 million, according to Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
Indian investment projects are mainly in manufacturing, mining, oil and gas exploration and exploitation, garment and textile, and animal feed.
For the past few years, Indian has always been among the top ten largest trading partners of Vietnam with bilateral trade worth $2.75 billion last year and is targeted at $4 billion this year.
Mentioning difficulties that the 170 member companies under Incham met during the first half of this year, Anant Chhajed, member of Incham’s board of governors said it was labor shortage.
The scarcity of trained Vietnamese staff really had a bad impact on us in the short-term, Chhajed said.
The fact is that many Vietnamese laborers lack maturity in thinking, so they quit a company for another just because of some additional $5-10 dollar a month, Anand said.
They are not aware of the possible promotion along their career ladder at a certain company, their long-term goal and prospect, and just focus on short-term benefits, he said.
What Indian business community, specifically, and foreign business communities, generally, needs now is the long-term commitments of their employees, Anand added.
Of course, we know inflation is the key reason for their leaving, but as the economic situation is improving, we need the Ministry of Education and Training to compile textbooks or training courses in occupational discipline so that workers will know what they should do in pursuing their long-term career, Chhajed said.
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