VietNamNet Bridge – Beer products made in other countries are flooding the Vietnamese market, where demand is the highest in Southeast Asia.

Hoang, 39, from District 2 in HCM City, said he was excited when he discovered that many imported beer products became available at supermarkets.

“Previously, we could only buy imported beer from the foreign manufacturers’ sales agents in Vietnam for family or holiday parties. But now the products are available at supermarkets as well,” he said.

The owner of a beer garden in District 1 also said it was now easy to buy wholesale products from distributors to sell for retail at his shop.

“In the past, I had to place orders with sales agents and importers, and I then got the deliveries later. But now I can order beer products and receive prompt delivery and negotiate prices via phone,” he said.

Meanwhile, the owner of a beer club in District 1 said that his customers preferred foreign imports, and of the 120 beer products available at his club, the number of Vietnamese-made products was so modest that “they can be counted on the fingers of your hands”.

Reporters from VnExpress, after conducting a quick market survey in HCM City, found that over 20 import beer products were available at supermarkets and sales agents in HCM City.

At Big C supermarket in district 2, buyers can find Japanese Asahi, Mexican Corona, German Oettinger and Bitburger and the Netherlands’ Royal Dutch. The products are to to four times more expensive than Vietnamese products.

A salesman at Big C said domestic products still are preferred thanks to their reasonable prices, but the sales of foreign beer have increased rapidly.

“In the past, imported beer was mostly sold to high-income earners because the products were very expensive because of added taxes and fees. However, middle-class consumers now also drink imported products as the prices have gone down and their incomes have risen.

The increasingly high demand for imported beer has prompted retailers to pay higher attention to the products. About a dozen beer products are now available at the Maximart chain. Co-op Mart, which had rarely distributed imported beer, has also tried with Budweiser.

A beverage import company, which has dozens of duty-free tax shops at border gates, revealed that his company had imported over 1 million liters of beer across the border.

However, he said the figure “was nothing”, if compared with the 11 million liters of beer imported into Vietnam through different channels.

Beer has been brought to Vietnam through official imports and cross-border imports, and by smugglers.

State management agencies reportedly discovered 26 beer smuggling cases in the first five months of the year, seizing 7,200 cans of different kinds. However, analysts commented that the volume of smuggled goods was much higher in reality.

An import beer distributor in Binh Thanh District in HCM City said he now supplies over 20 product items imported from many different countries.

The distributor said though Heineken beer now can be made at the manufacturer’s factory in Vietnam, Heineken products made in France and the Netherlands are still imported.