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| Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh attended and gave instructions at the Conference to promote economic diplomacy to serve the country's socio-economic development in the last 6 months of 2023. (Photo: Tuan Anh) |
During the 78 years since its establishment, the Diplomatic sector has always accompanied the nation, served the Fatherland and the people. Diplomacy is an important and strategic front in the period of fighting to protect the Fatherland and unify the country; it is a pioneering force in establishing and expanding relations with countries, territories, and international organizations, attracting external resources for development, enhancing international position, contributing to creating and maintaining a stable foreign environment for socio-economic development in the period of national construction, development and international integration.
As one of the four pillars of the industry, economic diplomacy is a core and continuous task that is increasingly being focused on and promoted to most practically serve the country's socio-economic development.
Economic diplomacy goes hand in hand with national development
Economic diplomacy has been formed and developed for more than half a century, accompanying the country's development since gaining independence.
As early as the mid-1970s, when the country was about to be reunified, the Foreign Affairs Sector had identified the need for a new direction, economic diplomacy, to serve the country's post-war recovery. The Economic Research Working Group of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was established, pioneering in studying and researching models and development trends of the world economy and advising the Party and Government in formulating economic development policies and strategies, overcoming difficulties such as fighting inflation, solving debt problems, etc.; boldly proposing innovative and breakthrough economic ideas, contributing to the cause of innovation in our country; actively expanding international relations, mobilizing aid for national reconstruction and making efforts to implement policies to break the siege and embargo.
Entering the 90s and especially since Vietnam joined the WTO in 2006, the Foreign Affairs Department has made efforts to seek resources for the country's economic development, contributing to opening up potential export markets; mobilizing and attracting FDI investment and ODA aid from partners; promoting the image of a dynamic and innovative Vietnam, thereby contributing to important achievements in trade, investment, tourism, etc., in recent years.
The Foreign Affairs sector has proactively and actively promoted Vietnam's deep international economic integration and linkages; provided strategic advice on Vietnam's active and responsible participation and contribution to multilateral economic cooperation mechanisms; supported the mobilization, negotiation and signing of FTAs with many key partners, contributing to expanding development space, making Vietnam an important link in regional and global economic linkages and increasingly consolidating and enhancing the country's international position.
Economic diplomacy actively implements the guidelines of the 13th Party Congress, effectively serving the country's socio-economic development.
The 13th Party Congress has set out important policies and guidelines for foreign affairs in general and economic diplomacy in particular. The 13th Congress affirmed “ensuring the highest national interests” and clearly defined the position and pioneering role of foreign affairs in “creating and maintaining a peaceful and stable environment, mobilizing external resources for national development, and enhancing the country’s position and prestige”. The Congress documents also for the first time set out the orientation of “building economic diplomacy to serve development, with people, localities and enterprises at the center”.
Thoroughly grasping and implementing the foreign policy of the 13th National Party Congress, promoting the tradition of the Diplomatic sector, in recent times, economic diplomacy has been deployed by the Diplomatic sector resolutely and comprehensively, with profound changes in quality and quantity, achieving many important and proud results, continuing to make practical contributions to the country's socio-economic development.
Vaccine diplomacy contributes to the successful implementation of the Vaccine Strategy, creating a foundation for the country to recover and develop its socio-economy.
In the context of the world and the country facing unprecedented challenges, especially the impact of the fourth wave of Covid-19, economic diplomacy has been proactively and actively deployed, in which vaccine diplomacy is the brightest spot, achieving results beyond expectations, making an important contribution to the fight against the epidemic and protecting people's health.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other ministries and sectors that are members of the Government's Working Group on Vaccine Diplomacy, headed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son, have advised senior leaders to hold phone calls, contact, exchange, and send letters to leaders of countries, international organizations, and vaccine manufacturing corporations to mobilize aid, supply vaccines, medical equipment, treatment drugs, and transfer technology. As a result, from the first 117,600 doses of vaccine in February 2021, by the end of 2021, Vietnam has received over 192 million doses, exceeding the target of 150 million doses according to Resolution No. 21/NQ-CP of the Government.
To date, Vietnam has received more than 258 million doses, of which foreign aid has reached over 120 million doses, accounting for nearly 50%, saving the state budget more than 900 million USD, equivalent to nearly 23 trillion VND.
The vaccine diplomacy campaign is also a large-scale and unprecedented diplomatic campaign in history, contributing to the success of the Government's Vaccine Strategy, helping Vietnam to be behind and ahead in vaccination and creating an important and decisive foundation for the country to switch to a strategy of safe and flexible adaptation to the pandemic and economic recovery.
Economic diplomacy promptly shifts its focus from vaccine diplomacy to diplomacy serving socio-economic recovery and development, with people, localities and businesses at the center.
The world situation since the beginning of 2022 has continued to evolve rapidly and complicatedly, deeply affecting highly open economies like Vietnam. In that context, Vietnam has maintained macroeconomic stability, controlled inflation, and ensured major economic balances. In 2022, Vietnam achieved a record GDP growth rate of 8.02%, the highest growth rate in the past 12 years.
Thoroughly implementing the policies of the 13th Party Congress, the directions of the General Secretary at the National Foreign Affairs Conference and the Prime Minister at the 31st Diplomatic Conference, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has promptly concretized the above important viewpoints and directions into key tasks in Directive No. 15-CT/TW dated August 10, 2022 of the Secretariat on economic diplomacy to serve national development until 2030, Resolution No. 21/NQ-CP dated February 20, 2023 of the Government promulgating the Government's Action Program for the 2022-2026 period to implement Directive No. 15-CT/TW.
On that basis, economic diplomacy in recent times has had a strong change from thinking, awareness to action in ministries, branches, localities and enterprises, truly becoming the central task of the entire diplomatic sector and achieving many positive results.
First, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has coordinated with ministries and branches to effectively organize foreign affairs activities, especially high-level foreign affairs, contributing to deepening economic relations with partners, maximizing resources and maintaining a favorable foreign affairs situation for national development.
In nearly 100 foreign affairs activities from the beginning of 2022 until now of the key leaders, economic cooperation has become the focus, achieving specific and substantive results with many economic cooperation agreements signed. Vietnam has established new and breakthrough cooperation frameworks such as the Digital Economy Partnership, Green Economy with Singapore, New Generation ODA with Japan, Strategic Partnership on Green Finance with Luxembourg, MOU on cooperation with WEF for the period 2023-2026, etc.
Second, the diplomatic sector actively contributes to promoting international economic integration and linkages; actively mobilizing and attracting resources to serve new growth drivers, green financial resources, investment in energy transition, high technology, etc.
Notably, Vietnam signed the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with the G7 and European countries with an initial investment of 15.5 billion USD; successfully attracted green and high-tech investment projects such as the world's first carbon-neutral factory project worth 1.3 billion USD of the Lego Group, the Research and Development Center worth 220 million USD of the Samsung Group...
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs actively promotes the implementation and supports the establishment of international economic cooperation and association frameworks, including 15 signed FTAs, signing an FTA with Israel and continuing to promote negotiations of FTAs with the EFTA bloc, UAE, Mercosur...
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| Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan signed the Action Plan for the period 2023-2026 on economic diplomacy to contribute to promoting the development of Vietnam's agricultural sector. (Photo: Tuan Anh) |
Third, in order to concretize the task of taking people, localities and businesses as the center of service, implementing the Prime Minister's direction at four major conferences on economic diplomacy in 2022 and 2023, the Foreign Affairs sector actively accompanies and supports sectors, fields, localities and businesses.
Vietnam expands economic cooperation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vietnamese representative agencies abroad will step up support for tourism recovery as soon as the Government decides to reopen international tourism on March 15, 2022 and advise the Government to issue favorable visa policies for international tourists; promote economic diplomacy meetings with industries facing difficulties such as textiles, footwear, wood and forestry products, seafood, etc. to help associations and industries grasp more information about markets and advise on orientations and solutions to remove immediate difficulties and expand export markets in the long term.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development signed and implemented the Action Plan for Economic Diplomacy to contribute to promoting the development of the agricultural sector in the 2023-2026 period; promoting new and breakthrough cooperation directions such as developing the Halal industry, tripartite agricultural cooperation, etc.
In 2022 and the first 8 months of 2023, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized more than 120 working delegations to localities, nearly 100 activities connecting international partners, overseas Vietnamese businesses with localities, supporting the signing of more than 250 international cooperation documents. Heads of Vietnamese representative agencies abroad worked with 9 ministries, branches, over 100 associations, and large Vietnamese enterprises to grasp the need for support to promote cooperation and remove difficulties.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will step up activities to update and inform localities, associations and Vietnamese enterprises about new trends and regulations in international trade and investment that affect exports and investment attraction; enhance market information, examine and verify partners; and actively support the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of Vietnamese enterprises in international trade disputes.
Fourth, in the context of the complicated and unpredictable developments of the world economy, research, consulting and strategic forecasting to serve socio-economic management are given special attention and promoted.
The Ministry continues to maintain and improve the quality of monthly world economic reports to serve regular Government meetings and provide them to localities and businesses for reference; promptly prepare advisory reports for the Government, ministries, branches and localities on current issues of the world and regional economy and emerging issues that have a direct impact on the country's economic development and advise and recommend appropriate policies.
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| Permanent Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Minh Vu chaired the May 2023 meeting between the Steering Committee for Economic Diplomacy and Vietnamese representative agencies abroad. (Photo: Quang Hoa) |
Economic diplomacy continues to play an important role as a driving force for rapid and sustainable national development.
In the coming time, in the context of the world economy still facing many difficulties and challenges, on the basis of closely following the directions of the Party and the Government, especially the direction of the Prime Minister at the Conference on implementing economic diplomacy in the last 6 months of 2023 in July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will focus on promoting economic diplomacy in the following three major directions:
Firstly, continue to take advantage of and promote the country's position and strength to the fullest extent, be more proactive and active in creating a favorable situation for the country's peaceful, secure and developing environment; effectively take advantage of cooperation opportunities while ensuring the consolidation of strategic balance and harmoniously developing relations with partners.
Second, prioritize promoting key growth drivers such as exports, investment, tourism, agriculture, etc. as well as new growth drivers in digital transformation, green development, circular economy, sharing economy, innovation, etc.
And thirdly, continue to resolutely concretize the policy of building economic diplomacy to serve development, taking people, localities and enterprises as the center of service, improving the effectiveness of supporting sectors, fields, localities and enterprises in international cooperation.
Promoting the achievements and the glorious 78-year tradition of the Diplomatic sector, with the highest determination, with urgency and determination like the vaccine diplomacy campaign, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vietnamese representative agencies abroad will further promote economic diplomacy to serve the country's development in the spirit of Directive No. 15-CT/TW of the Secretariat, Resolution No. 21/NQ-CP on the Action Program for the 2022-2026 period of the Government implementing Directive No. 15-CT/TW and the motto of being creative, drastic, flexible, effective and seizing every opportunity for national development to continue to make economic diplomacy truly an important driving force for the country's rapid and sustainable development.
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