Hanoi (VNA) – Deputy PrimeMinister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh is set to represent the VietnameseGovernment in signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the operationprinciples of the Vietnam-Singapore cooperation centre.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved thedraft document and assigned Deputy PM Minh to sign the MoU with arepresentative of the Singaporean Government.
Minh is on an official visit to Singapore fromJuly 30 to 31, which is expected to deepen the cooperative and strategicpartnership between the two countries.
The countries founded diplomatic ties on August1, 1973 and set up a strategic partnership in September 2013 during SingaporeanPM Lee Hsien Loong’s official visit to Vietnam.
They have actively worked to realise thestrategic partnership and obtained substantive outcomes in all fields, frompolitics, security and defence, and economy, to education and training, culture,and people-to-people exchange.
In politics, they have regularly organisedmutual visits and meetings at all levels. Their leaders have close relationswhich have been maintained through high-ranking visits and meetings atmultilateral forums.
Meanwhile, economic, trade, and investment tieshave developed continually over the past few years.
Singapore has been one of Vietnam’s biggesttrade partners since 1996, ranking second amongst ASEAN and eighth in terms ofglobal trade partners. Bilateral trade last year rose by 8.9 percent from 2016to reach 8.3 billion USD.
Direct investment from Singapore into Vietnamhas also been on the rise. The former is now the biggest ASEAN and the thirdlargest international investors in the latter. As of the end of last May,Singapore had 2,048 investment projects worth 43.53 billion USD in Vietnam.Their businesses have been present in 48 of the 63 provinces and cities ofVietnam. –VNA
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