The Vietnamese minister made the appeal during his talks with Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Hiroshige Seko, in Hanoi on September 14, as part of the guest’s working visit to Vietnam.
Welcoming the Japanese delegation, Anh affirmed that the visit made by Seko will contribute to significantly enhancing the economic, trade and investment ties between the two countries and tightening their bilateral cooperation in the spheres of industry, trade and energy.
The talks offered an important platform for the two countries to review the implementation of the cooperation programmes reached at the second meeting of the Vietnam-Japan Joint Committee on Industrial, Trade and Energy Cooperation, held in Tokyo in June 2017.
During their talks, the two ministers focused on discussing issues aiming to effectively implement the development strategy for Vietnam’s automobile and supporting industries. Minister Tran Tuan Anh proposed various contents for cooperation with Japan in the near future, in order to realise Vietnam’s modernisation and industrialisation development goals.
Concerning cooperation in trade, the Vietnamese official asked the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to deploy useful measures in order to effectively accelerate the bilateral trade ties in the current situation, whilst building a plurilateral cooperation mechanism between the relevant ministries and sectors in each country, aiming to remove all obstacles that hinder bilateral trade. The two ministers agreed to support each other in joining the process of regional and global economic integration.
In regards to energy cooperation, both the host and the guest shared the common perception of the significance of Vietnam-Japan energy cooperation in the medium and long term.
Minister Tran Tuan Anh spoke highly of Minister Hiroshige Seko’s recommendations, raised at the recent second meeting of the Vietnam-Japan Joint Committee in Tokyo, concerning the construction of a strategic partnership between the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade and Japan’s MEIT in the field of energy, aiming to identify the priority cooperation areas in line with the interests of both countries.
Hiroshige Seko highly appreciated and completely agreed with his Vietnamese counterpart’s opinions and directions with regards to the bilateral cooperation. He expressed his willingness to strengthen ties with Vietnam in the framework of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The two sides agreed to ask relevant units of the two ministries to work closely together in implementing their tasks and resolve the issues raised at the talks.
Within the framework of the talks, Minister Tran Tuan Anh and Minister Hiroshige Seko signed a Letter of Intent on bilateral cooperation in several fields of mutual interest, especially the supporting industry, automotive industry, energy, food processing and institutional capacity building, aiming to help Vietnam to effectively implement its regional and global economic integration process.
