Ba Ba Hoi Cooperative in Quang Nam Province’s Tam Ky City has recently and for the first time exported 32,000 banh chung (square glutinous rice cakes filled with green bean paste and fat pork) to the US - photo: Hoang Bin

Ba Ba Hoi Cooperative in Quang Nam Province’s Tam Ky City has recently and for the first time exported 32,000 banh chung (square glutinous rice cakes filled with green bean paste and fat pork) to the US, becoming one of the few small- and medium-sized enterprises in the province to sell produce and food products with official quota to this market. Before that, the cooperative, in cooperation with the LNS International Corporation, exported 10 tonnes of braised scad fish to the US.

Quang Nam has about 330 OCOP (One Commune One Product) products in addition to hundreds of startup products.

According to the Quang Nam Provincial Department of Industry and Trade, in the first nine months of 2023, almost 10 domestic and foreign trade promotion programs were implemented, including the Vietnamese-Lao Investment, Trade and Tourism Cooperation Forum in Laos’ Champasak Province in April, the China-ASEAN Expo in Guangxi in September, and the International East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) Trade, Tourism and Investment Fair in the south central coastal city of Da Nang in August, among others.

The department’s director Dang Ba Du said that apart from opening courses of training in rules of origin and production unit code (PUC) for enterprises, including OCOP businesses, the department provided the Provincial People's Committee with suggestions on detailed export program development while helping businesses, including distributors, to get market information from Vietnamese trade offices and counselors in foreign countries and territories worldwide.

Quang Nam has adopted many policies to expand export markets for its products, which have helped define the province's products potential for export, Du said.

Quang Nam believes that its rural products are capable of reaching foreign markets especially those with which Vietnam has signed a free trade agreement (FTA), he added.

A problem faced by Quang Nam is its lack of major distributors of produce, OCOP and outstanding rural industrial products. Therefore, the department has proposed that the Provincial People's Committee get the Quang Nam Business Association to encourage distributors to gather provincial goods for domestic sales and export, Du said.