The relationship between Vietnam and New Zealand has continued to be strengthened and developed in recent times. In particular, the two countries officially upgraded their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in February. With this solid foundation, how will the relationship continue to evolve in the time to come?

The relationship between Vietnam and New Zealand is currently experiencing a strong period of growth, with the two economies becoming increasingly interconnected over time, particularly in the field of trade. This close partnership has been significantly reinforced by the two countries’ shared commitment to promoting trade liberalization as well as their common approach to regional peace and security.

The network of trade agreements New Zealand and Vietnam are now joint members of provide businesses with so many opportunities to trade and invest in each other’s economies. And as comprehensive strategic partners, what we’re hoping is that the profile given to our relationship will encourage businesses to look more closely at taking advantage of the great, liberal, transparent trade rules that now exist between Vietnam and New Zealand and between New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

Non-tariff barriers are currently posing significant challenges to trade activities within the ASEAN region. In your opinion, what should Vietnam and New Zealand do to overcome these challenges?

One of New Zealand’s biggest companies, a dairy company called Fonterra, mentioned that Vietnam is in a very strong position to take leadership on the removal of non-tariff barriers in the region. And we think that New Zealand, having done a lot of work in this area already, can work quite closely with Vietnam on issues like harmonization or mutual recognition of standards, so that we are not both testing the same things at both ends of the border.

We can work together to support Vietnam to transition to digital trade, whereby we move away from the very burdensome paper-based certification that really is from another era.

There are industries that we can support together and strengths that we each have. Vietnam has a very strong tropical fruit industry. New Zealand has a very strong dairy and honey industry, which help flows increase over time, and I see huge potential for us to work together on those both bilaterally and regionally.

Can you tell us about the development of Vietnam’s agriculture and it how it can favor the New Zealand market?

New Zealand doesn’t tend to grow much tropical fruit, while we are much stronger in more temperate climate fruit like stone fruit, apples, and cherries, etc., and those sell very well in Vietnam. But New Zealanders really value tropical fruit like mango, longan, dragon fruit, and passionfruit.

And so we would like to see more of that fruit start to flow into New Zealand, as well as Vietnamese flowers. So we are working on those with our Ministry of Agriculture colleagues in Vietnam to ensure that we can overcome any non-tariff measures that unintentionally create barriers to the trade of those products.

And at the same time, we are working on projects in Vietnam to support smallholder farmers become profitable in growing that fruit. We have had a major project called “VietFruits”, and in the first phase of that we helped Vietnamese smallholder farmers grow dragon fruit suitable for export, and we are now doing it with passionfruit. And so I think by creating those kind of relationships and creating some excitement in each other’s markets for each other’s exotic products we can really lift our trade.

What can the Vietnamese Government do to attract more FDI from New Zealand enterprises in Vietnam and transfer technology?

I think when we start to reduce non-tariff barriers on trade and when our businesses start to understand each other better and understand each other’s markets, that trade will naturally begin to flow, and with it, investment will come. But what I should say is that Vietnam, at the moment, is undergoing an extraordinary period of institutional and instructional economic reform that I believe is the way of the future for increasing trade and trade liberalization between New Zealand and Vietnam and also between Vietnam and the region.

The sorts of innovative solutions that Vietnam is proposing, such as establishing a free trade zone in Da Nang, is an excellent way to increase investment in Vietnam. And I think that once those measures are up and running, you will see investors flooding into Vietnam.

And Vietnam, because of its links in a very fast-growing region, could potentially become an investment hub and a manufacturing hub for the region. I think the Vietnamese Government has absolutely the right idea, and we feel very optimistic about your future.