Center for WTO & International Trade (WITC)

Report: Vietnam after two-year implementation of the CPTPP from business perspective

09/04/2021    745

Time: 2021

By: Center for WTO and International Trade - VCCI

As the largest new-generation free trade agreement (FTA) that Vietnam has ever joined, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is considered a landmark milestone in the process of deepening international economic integration of Vietnam. Up to now, the CPTPP has officially taken effect in Vietnam for 2 years. During these two years, many of the CPTPP's commitments have been implemented in practice, the first results have also been reflected through macro statistics on trade and investment between Vietnam and CPTPP partners, and data on institutional reforms to implement the CPTPP commitment in Vietnam.

However, at the micro level, there is a little practical information on the actual impact of the CPTPP from the specific business perspective, especially micro, small and medium enterprises. Vietnamese businesses are understanding how the Agreement has been, how they have taken advantage of the opportunities from the CPTPP, how they have suffered losses and what is preventing them from accessing these significant perceived opportunities from this Agreement… are things that have only been conjectured or identified in isolation. Likewise, there is no clear information about enterprises' perceptions and assessments of the CPTPP, about the recent implementation of the Agreement as well as their intention to utilize the Agreement in the coming period, in the context of COVID-19 and volatile global trade.

Meanwhile, the real effectiveness of the CPTPP in particular and FTAs in general depends largely on the plans and actions of specific businesses. Therefore, information about enterprises' practices to utilize the CPTPP, their difficulties, hopes and proposals will be the significant indicators for relevant policy-making agencies and managers. On the basis of this information, the Government can make appropriate adjustments in many aspects to bring the CPTPP commitments closer to businesses, support the CPTPP's potential opportunities to become more feasible to business entities.

With the goal of giving an overview of the two - year CPTPP implementation from enterprise perspective as well as identifying the realities of the capacity, activities, realization and specific desires of the businesses, thereby providing necessary policy implications to the Government and competent agencies to effectively implement the CPTPP in the coming time, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Center for WTO and International Trade) performed the Research Report: "Vietnam after two-year implementation of the CPTPP from enterprise perspective".

The report is performed on the basis of analyzing the results of the Enterprise Survey conducted from August to October 2020 on aspects related to CPTPP and FTAs practices of enterprises. To provide a general overview, as a premise for comparing and interpreting information from the Survey, the Report also analyzes statistics on the overall trade and investment situation between Vietnam and other CPTPP countries and law development work to implement the CPTPP in the two years (2019-2020)

The report reflects the implementation of the CPTPP in the first two years from the business perspective, clarifies assessments and perceptions of businesses on the impact of the CPTPP on their business activities in recent years, as well as their projections of the effect of the CPTPP in the upcoming "new normal" post-COVID-19 period.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry would like to thank the Australia supports economic reform in Vietnam (Aus4Reform) for technical assistance in researching, surveying and developing this Report.

The Report (Vietnamese) is attached below: