At the working session (Photo: VNA) Minister of Industry and Trade
Nguyen Hong Dien held a working session with Ambassador of the Republic of
Korea (RoK) to Vietnam Park Noh-wan in Hanoi on June 2 to discuss measures to
further facilitate cooperation between the two countries in trade, industry,
and energy.
Both sides agreed that they boast major potential to
further expand their economic and trade ties to match their sound political
relations.
Sharing similarities in consumer interests, having a complementary
goods structure, and being members of many joint free trade agreements, Vietnam
and the RoK have seen increasingly tight links in the global value chain, they
noted.
Believing that COVID-19 is likely to remain a complex issue and create difficulties
in bilateral economic and trade ties, Dien and the ambassador sought measures
to promote trade, industrial, and energy cooperation between the two sides in
the future.
They agreed to continue working closely together and to
optimise the efficiency of existing bilateral cooperation mechanisms to reach specific
goals, including in COVID-19 prevention and control, while implementing action
plans to realise the target of 100 billion USD in two-way trade by 2023.
Both sides will strengthen links in the Vietnam-RoK
supply chain while fostering cooperation in energy, strengthening the operations
of the Vietnam-RoK Centre for Consultation and Technology Solutions, and
organising regular dialogues between the Ministry of Industry and Trade and RoK
enterprises.
Dien shared the difficulties facing RoK-funded projects amid COVID-19,
including those related to the entry of experts and high-quality human
resources into Vietnam, especially in projects in Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Vinh
Phuc and Thai Nguyen provinces.
He underlined that these difficulties are only
temporary and that the localities will promptly bring COVID-19 under control.
He asked for support from RoK enterprises for Vietnam’s measures in COVID-19
prevention and control, to avoid the spread of the virus in the community.
In order to ensure safe and continued production at
foreign firms and those from the RoK, Dien asked the ambassador as well as the Samsung
Group and the SK Group, which have signed agreements on COVID-19 vaccine
production in the RoK with the Moderna and Novanax Groups, to assist Vietnam in
accessing vaccine sources so the country can reach its goal of conducting
large-scale vaccinations, especially among workers at companies in industrial
parks, including those from the RoK.
For his part, Ambassador Park Noh-wan and representatives from RoK firms
affirmed that they will try to provide Vietnam with better access to COVID-19
vaccines, helping the country implement its “dual targets” of protecting people’s
health and speeding up socio-economic development and recovery in the “new
normal”.
According to figures from the Asian-African Market
Department, in the first four months of 2021, two-way trade between Vietnam and
the RoK hit 23.7 billion USD, up 15 percent year-on-year, with Vietnam’s
exports of 7.1 billion USD being a year-on-year increase of 14.3 percent.
Vietnam posted a trade deficit of about 9.5 billion USD with the RoK in the
period, up 9.3 percent over the same period last year.
The RoK is Vietnam’s largest foreign investor, with 9,076 projects and capital
of nearly 72 billion USD as of May 20, 2021./.