On the sameday, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc cabled a similar letter to his Malaysiancounterpart Tun Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad while Deputy Prime Minister andMinister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh also congratulated Malaysia ForeignMinister Dato’ Saifuddin Abdullah on the occasion.
Vietnam andMalaysia set up diplomatic relations on March 30, 1973 and lifted the ties to aStrategic Partnership in 2015.
Over the past45 years, the bilateral relations have been strongly developed across multiplefields, including politics-diplomacy,defence-security, economy, and cultural exchange.
Two-way trade in 2017 topped 10 billion USD, a year-on-yearincrease of 19.06 percent, of which Vietnam exported 4.2 billion USD worth ofproducts to Malaysia and imported goods worth over 5.8 billion USD fromMalaysia. Both sides are striving to increase trade value to 15 billion USD by2020 under the Vietnam-Malaysia Action Plan in 2017-2019.
Malaysia is now the 8th largest trade partner of Vietnamwhile Vietnam ranks 12th among Malaysian trade partners. Malaysia is the 7th biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, pumping 12.18 billion USD into 568 FDIprojects as of the end of 2017.
Malaysia has been in the top 10 Asian tourism markets ofVietnam, with some 400,000 arrivals in 2017, accounting for 3.48 percent oftotal foreigners spending holidays in the country in the year. –VNA