WTO target will not threaten reform goals

On the sidelines of a scientific workshop held last week in Hanoi to discuss the country’s trade after 20 years of reform, Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen said WTO membership is not the core issue, but more like a door to qualify the nation’s domestic reforms.
“The significant gain is that we are now witnessing radical improvement in reforming our legal system and other sectors in a bid to fulfill all the requirements before joining the WTO,” Tuyen said.
As part of the reform process the National Assembly passed 15 laws in the seventh session held in May and is expected to pass a dozen other laws in the on-going session.
Tuyen foresaw that Vietnam had a slim chance to get the WTO bid by the end of the year. He said it was only months before the country would be officially ranked in the world’s largest trade body.
“We shouldn’t think that it would be a big problem that we cannot enter the WTO this year. I have told you [the press] in March that the chance for us to do it is very slim, as there are numerous things we can’t do with the limits of such an overwhelming schedule,” Tuyen said.
“Nevertheless we will finish our bid in months,” he added.
The high-profile trade official also shared Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan’s recently expressed views that although the country would try its best to reach deals with the remaining WTO members requiring talks as part of the WTO bid process, it would not do so at the expense of the Vietnamese economy.
“We will do to our best to realise the WTO target by the end of this year, but not at any cost for the target,” Khoan said in an interview with local reporters on the sidelines of the ongoing National Assembly session.
“We can’t agree to do what is beyond our ability and what will put our economy at risk of collapse,” he said.
Vietnam has so far concluded bilateral negotiations on the country’s WTO membership with 22 countries and 10 official multi-lateral talk rounds.
According to Luong Van Tu, the vice minister of Trade and head of the country’s WTO negotiation team, the ongoing negotiation process with the six remaining member countries – the US, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Honduras and the Dominican Republic – have all shown some improvement.
Vietnam finished the latest round of talks with Australia late last month, considerably narrowing the gap between the two countries’ negotiated issues, Tu said.
He said the country’s negotiators would visit New Zealand for talks this week with their counterparts, who had expressed a willingness to reach a final deal in the shortest possible time.
The MoT Vice Minister was also expected to finish negotiations with Mexico, Honduras and the Dominican Republic soon, as Vietnam’s trading volume with these three countries is small.
Tu said the negotiation team was preparing for the next round of talks with the US. He said the US was now the toughest negotiating partner, as it has demanded numerous commitments from Vietnam.
“We are now preparing a better negotiating offer to the US trade officials in an effort to get closer to the requirements of this powerful trade partner,” Tu said.