"Vietnam started opening its markets and integrating its economy to the world and regional markets from 1986 on. In 1997, the Foreign Investment Law was promulgated and up till now, Vietnam has joined many economic organizations,  at  both  regional  and  international levels, such as ASEAN, APEC and WTO; established trading relations with some 180 countries and territories; and exchanged 86 bilateral trading  agreements  and  46  investment  agreements with many countries. Vietnam’s accession to the WTO in 2007 became a landmark in its international integration. In  2008,  Vietnam’s  foreign  trade  made  good progress although the world economy experienced many ups and downs. It kept fulfilling WTO commitments and took part in WTO activities; cooperated  with  ASEAN  countries  to  replace  the CEPT-AFTA with the ATIGA. At the end of 2008, it signed an important economic agreement with Japan after two years of negotiation. At present, Vietnam keeps perfecting the legal infrastructure for foreign trading relations by negotiating and signing bilateral and multilateral agreements, and opening its markets to the fullest as required to get recognized as a market economy. At the same time, Vietnam carries out its commitments on investment and trading relations as required by the WTO, AFTA, Vietnam – American Agreements. The international integration brings about opportunities to expand import and export for local companies and develop Vietnam’s foreign trade. Before 1995, Vietnam lived on foreign aid and its exports and imports didn’t reflect the nature of its economic growth. For this reason, this article only analyze the Vietnam’s foreign trade in the years from 1996 up to now and emphasis is put in the period after Vietnam’s accession to the WTO."

After many stages of development, corporate accounting system, especially the management accounting, has succeeded in supplying information needed for financial management. For both external and internal reasons, the management accounting is still new to Vietnam and not widely applied by local companies. With much keener competition between companies today, all companies have to considering how to manage their business better and cut their costs more effectively. This situation reaffirms the role of the management accounting in companies. In this article, the management control system will be outlined along with the role and the need to organize the accounting system in order to control the management and evaluate management responsibility in companies – known as the responsibility accounting system. Some measures to build the responsibility accounting model for local companies are also introduced.

"Global financial crisis and recession are affecting seriously the Vietnamese economy, especially its export. The export value in the first quarter of 2009 was estimated at US$13.5 billion increasing some 2.5% over the same period last year. This situation makes it difficult for Vietnam to gain an export growth rate of 13% set by the National Assembly. In such a situation, the export of farm products from Vietnam can also make some progress because their competitiveness is good enough and the world demand for food is high. Promoting the export of farm products not only help make up for falls in export of other goods but also implement the program to develop agriculture and rural areas as required by the conference of the VCP Central Committee of the 10th term. This effort is more meaningful  when  the  export  of  manufactured goods is falling."