Vietnam to enhance trade and investment ties with Russia and Hungary
Vietnam will further its trade and investment ties with Russia and lift its relations with Hungary to a comprehensive partnership next month.
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong will pay an official visit to Russia and Hungary on September 5-12, 2018, at the invitations of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, according to the Party Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations.
The September 5-8 visit to Russia is aimed to “further strengthen political trust, strategic attachment, and enhance the effectiveness of bilateral co-operation with Russia, and affirming Vietnam’s consistent foreign policy of placing Russia as a prioritised partner, and further promote the comprehensive strategic partnership in a more qualitative and practical manner.”
The visit, which will be followed by a joint statement, also aims to create a new co-operative momentum in the economic, trade, and investment sectors, expanding the market share of Vietnamese goods in Russia, the commission said.
The Party chief will meet with Russia’s leaders and witness the signing of several co-operation deals.
He will also attend the ground-breaking ceremony of Vietnamese TH Group’s high-tech concentrated dairy and fresh milk production projects in Russia’s Kaluga oblast.
Talking with VIR about this visit, Russian Ambassador to Vietnam K.V. Vnukov said, “This visit will be very important to the two countries’ multi-sectoral co-operation.”
“At the upcoming negotiations in Moscow, both countries’ leaders will discuss very important issues in bilateral co-operation, including trade-economic co-operation, which has received the most attention. Some positive results have already been made, but I think that only half of the co-operation potential has been reached so far,” he said. “Thus, I would stress that we pin much hope on the upcoming visit by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong to Russia, which I do believe will help boost the implementation of some joint venture projects.”
“Russia is expanding its investment presence in Vietnam. We have begun implementing a bilateral deal on constructing automobile manufacturing and assembling plants in Vietnam, with Russia’s famous brands like KAMAZ and GAZ. Hopefully in the near future, these automobiles will approach the majority of Vietnamese consumers,” he added.
Currently, Russia has only 116 investment projects in Vietnam, registered at $940 million. Meanwhile, Vietnam has 13 projects worth about $3 billion in Russia. The biggest firms include oil and gas joint ventures Rusvietpetro and Gazpromviet, the Hanoi-Moscow multi-functional cultural and business centre, the TH true MILK agricultural-industrial complex in Moscow, Kaluga, Primorsky, and Bashkortostan. Notably, TH Group in May 2018 inked a deal worth over $630 million with RFPI in order to produce milk in Russia.
After the free trade agreement between Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union took effect in October 2016, the two sides’ bilateral trade turnover has soared by an average 30 per cent per annum, to $3.55 billion last year.
Meanwhile, during Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s September 8-11 visit to Hungary, the two nations will lift their relations to a comprehensive partnership, with a view to creating new changes in the two countries’ co-operation and expanding Vietnam’s influence in the Central-Eastern Europe region.
This visit will also be the first by Vietnam’s Party General Secretary to a Central-Eastern European nation since the nations in this region changed their institutions.
The Party chief will meet with Hungary’s leaders and witness the inking of several co-operation agreements.
Currently, Hungary has only 17 investment projects in Vietnam, registered at $63.56 million. The total bilateral trade turnover hit over $355 million last year.
Source: vir.com.vn
