Vietnam and ROK strengthen agricultural cooperation

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) signed a number of documents on agricultural cooperation on June 17.

At the signing ceremony
At the signing ceremony

The documents include the Memorandum of Understanding titled "Building a medium and long-term vision for agricultural cooperation between Vietnam - the Republic of Korea (ROK) for the period of 2021-2025" and the discussion minutes "Training programme for the Vietnam National University of Agriculture to strengthen human resources in Vietnam's animal husbandry sector".

According to MARD Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh, nearly 30 years after the establishment of diplomatic relations, Vietnam and the ROK have upgraded their relationship to a strategic partnership and have achieved remarkable development in many fields such as trade, investment, culture, education and agriculture and rural development.

According to statistics, the ROK has become Viet Nam's largest foreign investor, with over 9,000 projects and a total of US$ 72 billion registered. In terms of trade, the ROK was Vietnam's third-largest trading partner, with two-way trade hitting US$66 billion, in 2020.

Deputy Minister Le Quoc Doanh said that “Building a medium and long-term vision for agricultural cooperation between Vietnam - the Republic of Korea (ROK) for the 2021-2025 period" has significant practical meaning to promoting sustainable development in the agriculture field of the two countries.

He also suggested that, in addition to traditional cooperation programmes and projects, the "medium and long-term vision" should focus on promoting more potential and comparative advantages of both parties; diversifying forms of cooperation from technical assistance and technology transfer to new forms of investment such as public-private partnerships, joint ventures, and value chain linkages; encouraging and attracting investment in agriculture; and improving the quality and value of agricultural, forestry and fishery trade between the two countries.

Regarding the discussion minutes titled "Training programme for the Vietnam National University of Agriculture to strengthen human resources in Vietnam's animal husbandry sector", the Deputy Minister said that this field still has a lot of potential for development.

The MARD will direct the Vietnam National University of Agriculture to effectively implement the project to improve the competitiveness of industry-related factors in order to contribute to the sustainable development of the animal husbandry sector and promote it to the global value chain.