Vietnam's advertising market is growing at 20-30 percent annually with the participation of increasingly more foreign and domestic firms, the Vietnam Advertising Association said on Monday.

Advertising enterprises in the country are predicted to make combined revenues of 24 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (1.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020, up from estimated 5 trillion VND ( nearly 314.5 million dollars) in 2005.

However, up to 80 percent of the annual revenues in recent years have been generated by some 50 foreign advertising firms and representative offices, the association said, noting that out of nearly 3,000 domestic firms, only 50-100 operate as actual advertising companies.

"Most of Vietnamese advertising companies just engage in doing outsourcing contracts or supplying services to foreign advertisers, " said the association's vice chairman Nguyen Quy Cap.

After joining the World Trade Organization, hopefully later this year, Vietnam, which housed only 40 domestic advertising enterprises in 1990, will see more advertisers, especially foreign ones, he said, noting that foreign firms currently available in the country include Saatchi and Saatchi, McCain, Densu, and J.W. Thompson.

Source: Xinhua