Vietnam, Australia promote cooperation on three pillars

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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc held a joint press conference with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison on the morning of August 23rd. (Photo: VGP)

The PM gave his statement during the joint press conference with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison on the morning of August 23rd.

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc warmly welcomed Australian PM and his spouse’ first official visit to Vietnam along with the Australian senior delegation. PM Phuc highly appreciated the meaning of the visit, as it happened during recent progressive developments of Vietnam – Australia relations after 45 years of diplomatic relations, specifically since March 3rd, 2018, after the two countries elevated to strategic partnership and January 2019 as both sides joined CPTPP.

PM Phuc said that in the morning, both PMs have met some major companies of two countries to discuss about effective investment cooperation and after that, both sides have also had a fruitful and successful talk on the basis of openness and friendship.

The two PMs agreed to continue to promote Vietnam – Australia strategic partnership on 3 pillars, one is increasing economic cooperation, second is expansive cooperation on defense and security; third is partnership about knowledge and innovation.

Regarding politics, both countries would continue to exchange contacts, visits through the Party, Government and National Assembly channels; expand local cooperation and people-to-people exchange. Two countries would continue to implement current dialogue mechanism, including the annual meeting Minister-level of Foreign Affairs, Economics and Defense.

Regarding defense and security, both countries would increase the number of programs on education, training, participating in peacekeeping operation, addressing war consequences…while focus on promoting cooperation in defense industries, defense research, cyber security, continue to closely cooperate in preventing criminals, specifically transnational criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. (Photo: Nguyen Hong)

Regarding economic cooperation, trade and investment, ODA, these are pivotal in the strategic partnership, with both sides making efforts in increase trade turnover and bilateral investments.

“We agreed to remove all the trade barriers and continue to implement policies to encourage, support two countries’ businesses to invest, in order to raise the trade turnover from 8 billion USD in 2018 to 10 billion USD in 2020”, said PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc. “I highly welcome the Australian Government in sending delegates from various sectors and top businesses to come and explore opportunities for cooperation and business investment in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Government highly appreciated Australia in continuing to provide ODA and promised to utilize such precious supports effectively”.

Both sides also focused on heavily promoting cooperation in education – traning, culture and sport, tourism, therefore establishing the friendly connection and people exchange between the two countries. Currently, there are more than 30.000 students in Australia, with more than 65.000 Vietnamese students graduated from Australia, who continued to work and contributed for the developments of Vietnam; about 2.500 researchers, experts and Australian students are studying, visiting for academic exchange in Vietnam according to the new Colombo Project.

Australia is also among the top potential tourism markets for Vietnam with more than 235.000 turns of customers to Vietnam during the first 7 months of 2019, increasing by 10% comparing to previous year.

Both sides also claimed to continue to closely collaborate on regional and international forums, including ASEAN and ASEAN-led mechanisms, United Nations, APEC, ASEM, supporting an expansive, comprehensive, fair and rule-based multilateral trading system; collaborate to implement CPTPP.

The two PMs also exchanged views regional and international issues of mutual concern and agreed to the analysis that while tendency of peace, stability, cooperation and development continued to be the mainstream, there remained the threats of terrorism, maritime criminals, transnational criminals and cyber security that require efforts on cooperation to resolve.

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