However, thanks to trade promotion and e-commerce, businesses have expanded the export market, improved their competitiveness and boosted exports.

With the support of the Asia-Africa Market Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the province organised an online conference for nine local businesses and 20 foreign partners and enterprises from Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Pakistan.

It has also assisted four enterprises operating in tea and cinnamon production and mining to join the Ready to Export (R2E) programme launched by the Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade).

Forty outstanding local industrial, forestry-fishery products were introduced at the 31st Vietnam International Trade Fair last April.

Businesses and cooperatives in Yen Bai participated in a number of online trade conferences held by Vietrade, which also brought together enterprises from Japan, China, Mexico, India and Africa, and other events aiming to link suppliers from the northern and north-central regions with exporters and trade promotion organisations in Hanoi.

The locality has also optimised e-commerce. Currently, 713 local products are put up for sales on the e-commerce platform of the provincial Department of Industry and Trade, while 138 are available on Voso.vn and Postmart platforms.

Such trade promotion activities have helped to rise the province’s export value in the first half of this year by 49% year-on-year to 147 million USD, surpassing the H1 growth scenario by 12.8 percent and equivalent to 52.5 percent of the set target.