Vietnam Trade Trip a Success, Delegation Says : Asia: The Hanoi government is on the road to a market economy, a mission from Orange County announces. The visit surpasses expectations, its members say.

Members of an Orange County trade delegation, concluding an eight-day mission to Vietnam on Saturday, said the results of the trip surpassed expectations and reinforced their beliefs that the Hanoi government is on the road to a market economy.

Vietnamese American delegates who were among the 27 members of the trade mission sponsored by the Orange County Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce said they were pleased by government officials’ support for expatriates seeking to invest in their native country.

The latest example raised by Vietnamese trade officials is a law enacted in July that allows foreigners who move to Vietnam to buy homes there, a right previously reserved for Vietnam’s citizens. The law takes effect in November.

“The purpose of that decree is to encourage overseas Vietnamese to come back and invest in the country,” trade official Le Cong Giau told the delegation in a meeting Friday. Giau chairs the Foreign Trade and Investment Development Center in Ho Chi Minh City, a group that advises foreign investors in southern Vietnam.

Co Pham, president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, told Giau the law “would be a real breakthrough for the overseas Vietnamese,” adding that it would be construed as a “real conciliatory gesture” from the government.

The Orange County delegation left Southern California Sept. 30 after angry protests from conservative Vietnamese Americans long opposed to overtures to the Communist government that took over South Vietnam in 1975.

After a whirlwind trip highlighted by meetings with Vietnam’s vice president and deputy foreign minister in Hanoi, the delegates left Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday pleased with the fact-finding mission’s outcome. They are scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport today.

In addition to Co Pham, other prominent delegation members included Kenneth Moore, president of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, and Robert Yasui, president of the Los Angeles-based Asian Business League.

Most of the delegation’s important meetings with government officials and industry counterparts took place during their five days in Hanoi. During their final three days here, the delegation met with officials from the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City--formerly known as Saigon--and leaders in the trade and planning departments here.

Group members also forged a number of connections they said may lead to future business deals.

Huynh Nguyen, an account manager at Technical Industries Corp., in Apple Valley, Calif., which produces feed for livestock, left Vietnam with a written memorandum from a Hanoi animal and poultry import and export company expressing interest in his company’s products.

Nguyen said government officials told him that “95% of Vietnam’s livestock and poultry are raised by families and not farms. This is an agricultural country, but their farmers are the poorest of the poor. A trade mission such as this is one of the many things that will help Vietnam.”

Kim Huynh Willis, who teaches at West Coast University in Los Angeles, came on a fact-finding visit to Vietnam with no expectation beyond meeting some of her peers. But after meeting with officials from the Ministry of Education, she left Hanoi with a verbal commitment from educators at the National Economics University to participate in an exchange program.

“We still have to define the details and work out the logistics , but I expect that we will send people here within the next three months,” Willis said.

While few delegates left with anything as concrete as the agreement Nguyen worked out, many said they were pleased simply to make business contacts and begin to understand the needs and opportunities in Vietnam. Many said they understood the voyage might not yield immediate results, but they believed the effort was worthwhile.

“Based on the discussions with officials, I see that there is a need for better infrastructure, legal services, medical equipment and centers and telecommunications,” Moore said.

“I am going to go back to the business people in Orange County who specialize in these things and say now is the right time to get involved, and I know some of the people who can help you.”

Because of the controversy he has generated in recent years by advocating a business relationship with Vietnam, Pham has deliberately remained coy when officials here asked if he was interested in doing business in the country. But on a few occasions when officials in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City asked if there was a possibility that he could help with the building and design of a medical facility like his Westminster offices on Bolsa Avenue, he said he would consider their request.

“The last thing I need right now is for Vietnamese Americans in Orange County to say I’m only interested in making money in Vietnam,” Pham said later.

On Saturday, the group’s last day in Vietnam, the delegates were invited to a lunch hosted in their honor by officials of the Irvine based Fluor Daniel Corp., which has an office in Ho Chi Minh City.

“It’s been a very productive trip, but we are ready to go home,” Pham said. “We still have a lot of work to do. We have to convince people there are mutual benefits and personal gratification in the betterment of Vietnam.”