The top Vietnamese legislator made the statement during a meeting with Speaker of Russia’s State Duma Vyateslav Volodin on November 30 in Havana, Cuba, which she is visiting to attend the funeral of Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro Ruz.
The two sides highlighted the effective and practical cooperation between the two legislative bodies, saying that the two sides have regularly maintained dialogue mechanisms and close coordination at international parliamentary forums like the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and the Asia-Europe Parliamentary Partnership (ASEP) Meeting.
NA Chairwoman Ngan suggested the Russian side accelerate the signing of an agreement on food safety control making it easy for Vietnam to expand exports of farm and aquatic products to the Russian market.
She also called for more support from Russia’s State Duma for the Vietnamese community in the country.
For his part, Vyateslav Volodin assured Chairwoman Ngan that his country considered Vietnam its leading partner in Southeast Asia and that it hoped to step up the traditional friendship and comprehensive cooperation between the two nations.
The legislators agreed to back measures to bolster bilateral relations and the implementation of the Vietnam–Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in October 2016, with the aim of lifting two-way trade to US$10 billion by 2020.
They also underlined the need to perfect the regulatory framework for bilateral cooperation and enhance connectivity among locales in the two countries in the future.
Volodin took the occasion to invite NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan to attend the IPU General Assembly in October 2017 in his country.
On the same day, Ngan and the Vietnamese delegation laid a wreath at the Ho Chi Minh monument in Havana.
