In order to effectively support Vietnamese industrial zones to seek investment opportunities from Japan and participate in global value chains, access quality of raw materials and high-tech equipment for production. In the morning of September 9, 2020, the Trade Promotion Agency (Ministry of Industry and Trade) coordinated with the Vietnam Trade Office in Japan, JETRO Japan Trade Promotion Organization and localities Vinh Phuc, Quang Ninh and Nghe An organized the seminar - online trade "Vietnam - Japan Investment Connection 2020" with the participation of hundreds of enterprises from the two countries.

 The seminar included a plenary session and one face-to-face session between Japanese investors and Vietnamese enterprises.

Mr. Vu Ba Phu, Director of the Trade Promotion Agency affirmed that Japan is always one of the major investment countries in Vietnam in terms of both the number of projects and the total investment capital. The wave of Japanese investment into Vietnam is constantly increasing in both the number of enterprises and investment capital. Specifically, in 2018, Japan led the country investing in Vietnam with 8.59 billion USD, accounting for 24.2% of the total investment capital among 112 countries and territories with investment projects in Vietnam. By the end of 2019, more than 2,000 Japanese enterprises invested in Vietnam and the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Japan continued to increase strongly. Accumulating FDI attraction by the end of 2019, Japan ranked second with a total registered capital of 59.3 billion USD, accounting for 16.7%. This shows that Japan is always an important investment partner of Vietnam after 47 years of establishing diplomatic relations.

According to evaluation of experts, the Vietnamese market has great potential to attract Japanese enterprises to invest in production expansion. Not only large enterprises, corporations, but now Japanese small and medium enterprises are also increasing investment promotion in Vietnam. Japanese businesses tend to invest in other localities instead of concentrating only in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City as before. In the current context, the promotion of economic cooperation between the two countries Vietnam - Japan has been increasingly focused to increase the attraction of Japanese investment in the coming time, together with measures to encourage technology transfer, it will help improve the technology level and production capacity of Vietnam to contribute to the realization of the goal of turning Vietnam basically into a modern industrial country. Especially, after 47 years of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries, this will be a favorable opportunity for promoting trade and investment cooperation for enterprises of the two countries in a new period.

At the same time, Director General Vu Ba Phu also said that the complicated Covid-19 epidemic in the world made world trade in goods many difficulties, significantly affecting real life and trading of businesses activities all over the world. Vietnam's import-export market is also significantly negatively affected by this spiral. The Covid-19 translation has heavily affected most economies in the world including Vietnam's major trading partners such as the US, EU, Japan, ASEAN. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has warned that the global Covid-19 crisis threatens to cause international trade in 2020 to drop to a record level. The impact of this crisis is likely to far exceed the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. It is estimated that global transaction volume could decline 13% - 32% in 2020, after reaching a 2.9% increase in 2018 and a 0.1% decrease in 2019. Japanese enterprises investing in Asia and Oceania of JETRO in February 2020, 63.9% of Japanese enterprises doing business in Vietnam will continue to expand, the highest rate in ASEAN and ranked third in Asia and Oceania region.

In the coming time, Vietnam will continue improving institutions and policies to improve the quality and efficiency of foreign investment cooperation with the aim of concentrating on attracting and cooperating with foreign investment selectively and quantity, efficiency, technology and environmental protection are the main evaluation criteria; Prioritize projects with advanced technology, new technology, high technology, clean technology, modern governance, high added value, spillover effects, connecting the entire production and supply chain. This is also the strength of Japanese businesses. This investment cooperation will be complementary and complementary to each other and develop together. On the side of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam, the Trade Promotion Agency is always ready to support and create favorable conditions for Japanese enterprises to expand investment and business relations with Vietnam in the coming time.