Transcript: Vietnam insights and opportunities
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Sean Riley ‒ Senior Trade Commissioner Vietnam
Sean is responsible for Austrade’s teams in the Embassy in Hanoi and the Consulate in Ho Chi Minh. Sean speaks Japanese and Thai and is studying Vietnamese.
He was previously based in Austrade’s head office in Sydney where he was the Group Manager of Marketing, Sponsorships and Major Events. He spent eight years as the Senior Trade Commissioner in Singapore and then Bangkok, before taking a year off in 2008 to study for an MBA from Melbourne Business School.
Transcript
>>Sean Riley: The trends in Vietnam are similar to others around the region. We have a very young population; we have growing urbanisation. I think some of the predictions are that by 2025 50% of Vietnamese will live in urban centres. That brings with it all of the challenges of infrastructure, energy consumption, modern living sort of attributes that other countries face and that too represents opportunity for Australian companies.
Vietnam’s economy is export driven. Their largest exports are in the agribusiness sector. I think for Australian companies there’s two levels of opportunity. A lot of it is to do with equipment, technology and services into the agricultural production that leads Vietnam’s economy – rubber, rice, cashews, coffee, pepper – but the second tier, as the market urbanises, is in supermarkets, is in food service where the tourism sector’s taking off. So there’s quite a multi-dimensional layer of opportunities for Australians in the agribusiness sector.
I think there are four areas where Austrade can really add value for Australian companies wanting to operate in Vietnam. The first is with access, door opening to the state owned enterprises and to the Vietnamese government to help people win opportunities with those people. Secondly, I think there’s the interpretation, understanding, clarification of Vietnamese law, Vietnamese regulation. The third point, in a market where information is difficult we have a network of service providers, a network of colleagues in market, we can help Australian companies move around the market, find out more information to enable them to plan and operate their businesses. And finally, with such a big difference in business culture we help Australian companies; we can coach them through ways of doing business in Vietnam.
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