The ASEAN Secretariat has published its policy brief highlighting the economic impact of COVID-19 on ASEAN recently.

The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) was approved by the European Parliament in February 2020 and is expected to be approved by the National Assembly of Vietnam at its meeting in mid-2020. Although the COVID-19 outbreak may delay the meeting, the approval of the Agreement is a top priority.

Despite being hit hard by the COVID-19 epidemic, many Vietnamese businesses have been quick to catch up with the trends and switch to new products to gain decent growth amid the major shift in global consumption.

The Vietnam Steel Association (VSA)’s member enterprises suffered a strong reduction in production and business in the first quarter of this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT)’s Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) has made a list of 5,000 exporters that need help in finding markets amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh has signed on decision announcing the rice export quota for April after the Prime Minister gave the green light to resume exporting the product.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) has launched a number of measures to tackle difficulties for the Vietnam – China trade, amid the complicated developments of COVID-19 pandemic.

Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh has recently written an article on ASEAN cooperation in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he described solidarity as the grouping’s strength in the combat.

The number of active COVID-19 patients in ASEAN passed 10,000 at the beginning of this week. As a collective, ASEAN represents nearly 650 million people, and with more people continuing to be infected with each passing day, the ASEAN, it’s people, economy and way of life are hit increasingly harder.

South Korea and Vietnam held a videoconference on Monday to share ideas on ways to expand their economic ties despite the strain caused by the pandemic on global business activities.