Addressing the Summit, held by the Vietnam Women Entrepreneurs Council under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh said the COVID-19 pandemic has caused heavy losses to the global economy and ASEAN member nations in particular.

While holding the 2020 ASEAN Chairmanship amid the coronavirus outbreak, she noted, Vietnam has exerted every effort to organise a range of activities in conformity with the theme of “Cohesive & Responsive”.

Regional women in general and female entrepreneurs in particular have been greatly inspired by the bloc’s commitment to efforts promoting gender equality and empowering women, made in the Chairman’s Press Statement of the ASEAN Leaders’ Special Session at the 36th ASEAN Summit on Women’s Empowerment in the Digital Age, held last June, the Vice President said.

Vice President expressed her belief that the ASEAN Women Entrepreneurs Network will become a leading forum for regional businesswomen to lead the entrepreneur community towards economic integration and to remain united to proactively and effectively respond to the impact of the pandemic and climate change.

She also hoped that businesswomen would seize opportunities from the fourth Industrial Revolution and capitalise on ASEAN countries’ support in order to develop strongly and sustainably for a stronger and more responsive community of regional women entrepreneurs.

The summit featured four sessions on the response to COVID-19, the promotion of digital transformation and the comprehensive recovery of women-owned businesses, gender-smart investment, and the promotion of effective cooperation via networks.

In the speech at the Summit, Deputy Minister of Labour - Invalids and Social Affair Le Tan Dung said that, according to the report of UNESCAP, rate of women entrepreneurs has been increasing considerably with 61,3 million women entrepreneurs. Thus, enhancing the business capacity of women not only helps them improving their economic empowerment, but also contributes to the development of prospection, coverage for all society. However, women enterpreneurs have to face with many difficulties relating to marketing capacity, capital resource, management skills. In the context of digital transformation has been occured drastly, women enterpreneurs should be enhanced developing the skill on technology, infomation technology in order to promoting the potential of business management and developing their careers.

A number of recommendations were approved on improving businesswomen’s access to support resources, especially from governments, credit institutions, and social organisations; developing human resources, capacity, access to new technologies, and technological literacy; boosting digital transformation in women-owned enterprises; and building a gender-responsive ecosystem for nurturing enterprises.

The ASEAN Women CEO Summit was held ahead of the 37th ASEAN Summit and related meetings, which are scheduled to take place via videoconference from November 12 to 15.