Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue (L) shakes hands with Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison (Photo: VNA)Sydney (VNA) – Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue heldworking sessions with some Australian officials on July 24 to seek measures tofurther foster partnership between the two countries.
At a meeting with Treasurer Scott Morrison, Deputy PM Hue, who is on avisit to Australia from July 23-25, highly valued Australia’s commitment tocontinue providing development assistance to Vietnam in various fields such as environment,the improvement of livelihoods for mountainous and rural areas, climate changeresponse, and gender equality.
Morrison lauded Vietnam’s role as the host of the APEC 2017 with manyimportant meetings. Vietnam has also devised the agenda for the event, which receivedhigh approval from member economies, he said.
He affirmed Australia’s policy of giving top priority to cooperationwith the ASEAN and the country’s wish to help promote ASEAN’s solidarity,self-reliance, prosperity and central role in the region.
The two sides agreed that bilateral partnership is experiencing a soundperiod, with strong collaboration in economy, trade and investment. They laudedthe close ties between the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam and Australia’sTreasury, with the signing of a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in2012.
The two sides are also discussing the signing of another deal for thenew period to 2020, aiming to share experience in finance-budget, state budgetallocation and the management of bad debt and public debt of joint stockcommercial banks, and maintaining the macro economy’s stability.
Both sides agreed to foster cooperation within multilateral economicforums and organization such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and theAsian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
At a meeting of the New South Wales Local Government Minister GabrielleUpton, Deputy PM Hue praised the positive contributions of New South Wales to thegrowth of the Vietnam-Australia partnership, especially in education, tourism,people-to-people contact.
He expressed hope that with high potential in industry, agriculture,finance and service, New South Wales will continue acting as a pioneer in boostingthe Vietnam-Australia economic relations.
Upton stated that the New South Wales Government always attaches muchimportance to cooperation with Vietnam, pledging to encourage local firms to strengtheninvestment and business in Vietnam in promising areas such as education, coaland gas export and energy security.
She declared that New South Wales always creates the best conditions forthe 120,000-strong Vietnamese community to settle in and develop.
Also on July 24, Deputy PM Hue attended the Vietnam-Australia BusinessDialogue that drew 150 delegates from leading Vietnamese and Australian firmsin diverse areas such as rice production and import, seafood, banking, urbanplanning, IT, mining and logistics.
Addressing the event, Deputy PM Hue noted that Australia is now the 19th largest investor in Vietnam with 407 projects worth 1.85 billion USD. Australiais also an important market of Vietnamese investors who are running 36 projectswith total capital of nearly 200 million USD in the country.
Australia is also the seventh largest trade partner of Vietnam. Two-waytrade reached about 5.3 billion USD in 2016, with Vietnam’s exports valued at 2.86billion USD.
He held that bilateral trade will be further developed thanks to suchcooperative frameworks as the ASEAN-Australia free trade agreement, APEC, andthe future Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and TPP (if it isto be deployed).
He suggested that Australian enterprises should expand investment activitiesin Vietnam in the manufacturing industry, energy, infrastructure building,service-education-tourism, agriculture, food processing, and minerals.
Director of the Austrade CEO Stephanie Fahey highlighted the developmentof bilateral partnership strategy in agriculture, food, education andinfrastructure. He affirmed that Austrade will work hard to connect businessesof both sides for the completion of the strategy.
At the event, many enterprises showed interest in investing in Vietnam,especially rice development, aquatic farming and breweries. They also asked forthe Vietnamese Government’s support during their investment.-VNA
VNA
