Pushing ahead with vaccine diplomacy is among the tasks Vietnam’s overseas representative bodies have been asked to perform so as to help achieve the “twin targets” in the last half of 2021.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son (Photo: VNA) – Pushing ahead with vaccine diplomacy is among the tasks
Vietnam’s overseas representative bodies have been asked to perform so as to help
achieve the “twin targets” in the last half of 2021.
The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) held a teleconference on July 29 to discuss
measures for stepping up economic diplomacy to serve the COVID-19 combat and
efforts to achieve this year’s socio-economic development targets.
Addressing
the event, which gathered all the 96 ambassadors and heads of overseas
representative agencies of Vietnam, Minister Bui Thanh Son said the brightest
spot of economic diplomacy in the first six months was vaccine diplomacy, which
has helped persuade partners to provide the country with over 14 million doses
of
COVID-19 vaccine.
The
MoFA has made proactive moves and coordinated with relevant parties to deal
with issues emerging in Vietnam’s economic relations with other countries and
to connect many foreign investors with Vietnamese localities and enterprises,
he noted.
He
held that the pandemic will not end soon but develop more complicatedly, and
that it will ease thanks to vaccination, which will create conditions for the
economy to reopen.
Asking
diplomats to take proactive and creative action to perform their duties, Son
said apart from promoting vaccine diplomacy, they also need to keep a close
watch to discover new trends during and after the pandemic so as to advise the
Government about national development strategies and orientations; further
expand and intensify Vietnam’s economic ties with important partners and
capitalise on free trade agreements; step up locality and business matching
activities, adapt external economic activities to the COVID-19 pandemic; and
proactively propose plans and road maps for resuming economic activities and
travel between Vietnam and other countries.
To
carry out these tasks, the minister called on the entire diplomatic sector to
exert every effort and resource for the realisation of national development
goals.
For
their part, the heads of Vietnam’s overseas representative bodies said they are
aware of the their responsibility towards the homeland and the people amid the
entire nation striving to obtain the “twin targets” of curbing the pandemic and
recovering and boosting socio-economic development./.