The Vice-President of the European Commission, Antonio Tajani, has led a Growth Mission to South-East Asia, visiting first Vietnam and then Myanmar/STRONGurma and Thailand. The delegation included numerous European companies, many of them Italian, who took part in B2B meetings in Ho Chi Minh City. In the same city, Tajani opened the European Business Centre (EUBC), whose consortium includes Unioncamere Emilia Romagna and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (ICHAM), currently being set up, as co-applicants. One of the EUBC’s tasks will be to spread information in Europe on the potential Vietnam holds out for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Tajani also met representatives of the Italian economic community, with which he discussed the internationalisation programmes promoted by the Commission. He also illustrated existing business protection/support initiatives in the market and the instruments made available by the Commission, such as COSME, to increase the percentage of European SMEs operating abroad. During the visit, the Vice-President signed a letter of intent with the Vietnamese Government for a dialogue on SME policies.
The initiative is of interest to Italy as it should enable a resumption of the cluster project in the timber/furniture and footwear, textiles and clothing sectors that was launched by the Directorate General for Development Cooperation and UNIDO and ended in 2012. The Federlegnoarredo representative in the European delegation announced that a mission for the timber/furniture sector, one of the most promising for Italian SMEs, is in the pipeline. Source: infoMercatiEsteri. Read more news, in Italian, from Angola, Russia, France, Poland, China and the BRICS countries.
