How will your industry adapt to changing conditions in 2020?

AmCham’s core mission remains the same – to promote trade and investment between the United States and Vietnam, and serve as the voice of American business in Vietnam, together with our chapter in Hanoi.

AmCham Vietnam-HCMC already is one of the largest business associations in Vietnam, with over 500 corporate and 1500 individual business representatives. Early on in 2020, AmCham Vietnam-HCMC’s Board of Governors defined our 2020 goal – to be the most strategic, influential, and dynamic business association in Vietnam – that drives innovation and helps its members succeed in Vietnam. A community you want to join.

We also agreed our 2020 objectives were to establish a branch or chapter in Da Nang to support our growing Da Nang-based members, to strengthen our committee leadership, and to identify new ways to provide value to our members.

We are taking steps to achieve all these objectives – just on a slightly different timeframe and approach than we envisioned in mid-January.

We continue to support our members through networking, business intelligence, advocacy, and business promotion opportunities. We have undertaken new measures to adapt to the new operating environment, and deliver more value to our members.

Starting in early March, we facilitated virtual participation in all our regular meetings. Since mid-March, all of our regular events and committee meetings have been exclusively online. That has included Virtual Business Intelligence Briefings on the Legal Aspects of COVID-19 and Managing a Remote Workforce (the latter coordinated by Vietcetera co-founder and CEO as well as Digital Economy Committee Chair Hao Tran), as well as our first entirely virtual AmCham 101 Newcomers Orientation.

While virtual meetings don’t offer the same ability to make personal connections as physical meetings, we have found they do attract even greater participation, including from senior business leaders, who might otherwise find it difficult to join due to their extremely busy schedules and need to be physically present in factories in other provinces.

Our top priority now is to help support our members during this challenging time. In early February, we held a Business Intelligence Briefing on the Health and Business Impact of COVID-19 with top business leaders, and the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Vietnam.

We carried out a survey in mid-February to identify the key issues affecting our members, arranged a meeting with the Consul General and lead manufacturers to discuss supply chain challenges, and facilitated sharing of best practices in our committee meetings, as well as events with expert advisers. We provide regular updates to our members and maintain a COVID-19 corner on our website with links to trusted, authoritative sources of information on COVID-19.

In this rapidly-changing environment, AmCham is focused on policy advocacy – identifying key concerns of our members and making recommendations to the Vietnamese Government for criteria to identify essential businesses, both in the service sector, and also potentially in the manufacturing and production sector if such measures are necessary to control the outbreak.

Together with Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Dr. Vu Tien Loc, I co-hosted a virtual meeting last Friday with over 85 participants and 20 local and foreign business organizations to solicit policy recommendations to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on business in Vietnam, and to identify criteria to use in defining essential services and manufacturing and production.

The logistics were challenging, but AmCham’s talented team made it work, with two Zoom meeting links, one for the main discussion in Vietnamese, and one with simultaneous English interpretation. We know the meeting had impact. Several of the recommendations made by AmCham and other business associations were incorporated in the Office of Government’s letter No. 2601/VPCC-KGVX for Implementation of Directive No. 16/CT-TTg on prevention and control of COVID-19 outbreak issued that night.

AmCham also is directly supporting the Vietnamese Government’s impressive efforts to control the outbreak. Thanks to generous donations from our members and friends, on March 31, AmCham contributed 250,000 surgical facemasks to the HCMC Department of Health to support front-line workers in hospitals and public quarantine centers.

Many of our members, including Intel and Coca-Cola, have also made significant contributions to support the Vietnamese government’s COVID response. AmCham also is coordinating contributions of non-perishable food and beverages to support Vietnamese front-line workers in hospitals and quarantine areas. AmCham joined an open letter with other foreign business chambers to express our appreciation for the Vietnamese government’s efforts to keep us all safe and well.

AmCham also has worked with our colleagues at the U.S. Agency for International Development to identify potential suppliers in Vietnam of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for export to the United States.

Finally, AmCham is using our AmCham Member Discount Partnership Program to support local businesses which we know are particularly struggling during this challenging time, but which make Saigon and Vietnam such a wonderful place to live. Discount Partners do not need to be AmCham members. They just offer us a discount or special offer of their choice and we promote them to our over 1500 members to support local businesses throughout Vietnam.

Business Trends in Vietnam in 2020: Mary Tarnowka, Executive Director, AmCham Vietnam-HCMC