Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Minh Hang. (Photo: Vietnam+)
Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Minh Hang affirmed that economic diplomacy is becoming more and more substantial and methodical in the spirit of "3 clear": clear results, clear products, clear contributions to socio-economic development, contributing to consolidating the foundation for the country to enter a new era, an era of national growth.
- Mr. Deputy Minister, at the conference summarizing economic diplomacy in 2024 and focusing on 2025, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh assessed economic diplomacy as a bright spot in foreign affairs. What important and substantive changes in economic diplomacy have contributed to the country's socio-economic development achievements in the past year?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Minh Hang: In the context of the world and regional situation continuing to develop complicatedly, with opportunities and challenges intertwined, economic diplomacy in 2024 has been promoted in a methodical, drastic and effective manner, closely following the spirit of Directive 15 of the Secretariat, Resolution 21 on the Government's Action Program and the Government's orientations, directions and administrations, bringing about many specific and practical results, creating breakthroughs, and making important contributions to the country's overall socio-economic development achievements.
It can be said that economic diplomacy has truly become the key content in nearly 60 foreign affairs activities of key leaders in 2024, with more than 170 cooperation agreements signed, thereby promoting cooperation in trade, investment, tourism, and labor with major markets and key investment partners, especially Northeast Asia, the US, and India.
Meanwhile, new growth drivers are also being strongly promoted. For example, with South Korea, we signed nine government-level documents on cooperation in renewable energy, semiconductors, and high-tech electronics; we have put innovation, creativity, green transformation, and digital transformation at the center of our cooperation with the UAE and Qatar in the coming time...
In particular, we have implemented many decisive, drastic, effective, practical, and timely activities to promote technology diplomacy with key partners and large technology corporations.
Production line specializing in high-tech electronic components. (Photo: Nguyen Thao/VNA)
The highlight of the past year was attracting leading technology corporations to Vietnam, such as NVIDIA, Amkor, LG, Hyosung, Foxconn...
Market diversification and partner diversification have also been vigorously implemented and brought about many practical results.
With markets that still have much room for growth such as Latin America, Middle East-Africa, Central Eastern Europe, we have promoted economic diplomacy with important partners (Chile, Peru, Brazil, Dominica, Hungary, Romania, UAE, Qatar...); promoted new directions such as developing the Halal industry by successfully organizing the first National Halal Conference.
In particular, through the Prime Minister's visit to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (October 2024), we upgraded our relationship to Comprehensive Partnership and signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the UAE, opening a new stage of development in economic, trade, investment, science and technology cooperation, and strategic infrastructure development with the UAE and the entire Middle East region.
Economic diplomacy has actively promoted the implementation of the results of high-level visits, contributing effectively to the implementation of strategic breakthroughs. Strategic advisory work and policy proposals for socio-economic management continue to be promoted.
International cooperation in building high-quality infrastructure and connecting “hard” and “soft” strategic infrastructure between us and neighboring countries is promoted.
Most recently, we have vigorously promoted the implementation of three railway lines connecting with China; mobilizing resources from sponsors to implement Vietnam's railway projects.
International cooperation on developing high-quality human resources has been expanded, making cooperation on high-quality human resources an important content of our cooperation with partners.
Another important highlight is that economic diplomacy has actively supported localities and businesses to expand international economic relations with the spirit of taking people, localities and businesses as the center of service.
Vietnamese representative agencies abroad have carried out more than 700 economic diplomacy activities to promote trade, investment and tourism; supported localities in more than 400 trade and investment promotion activities of localities at home and abroad, including supporting provinces and cities to sign 130 agreements with international partners.
It can be seen that economic diplomacy is increasingly institutionalized and systematized in a methodical manner and has the consensus and participation of the entire political system and the close coordination of ministries, branches and localities.
- In a press conference on the eve of the New Year 2025, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son emphasized that: "Foreign relations play an important role, positioning Vietnam favorably in the flow of the times and combining national strength with the strength of the times to serve the country's rise..." What is the contribution of economic diplomacy, Deputy Minister?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Minh Hang: As General Secretary To Lam said, our country is standing at a new historical starting point. Bringing the country into a new era, an era of growth, is in line with the trend of the times and the practices and experiences of previous countries.
The history of human development has proven that for a country to rise in world politics, economy and civilization, it requires a strong breakthrough, creating fundamental changes in quality.
It can be affirmed that economic diplomacy has never been promoted as it is in the current period. This is the policy that the Party has directed and from the beginning of this term, it has identified three focuses of economic diplomacy: economic diplomacy is the basic and central task of Vietnamese diplomacy; it is the task of the entire political system; it is the driving force to promote rapid and sustainable development.
In that spirit, the Government and the Prime Minister have given very strong directions to concretize the Party's policy. In the recent past, the Prime Minister has directly directed with much emotion, enthusiasm and determination to promote economic diplomacy.
And in fact, we have seen very clear results. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prime Minister directed economic diplomacy to focus on vaccine diplomacy, thereby creating a turnaround and changing the state.
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China Xiong Bo hands over 300,000 doses of Vero-Cell vaccine donated by the Chinese Ministry of National Defense to the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense. (Photo: Hong Pha/VNA)
Currently, the Prime Minister also continues to direct ministries and branches, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to continue promoting economic diplomacy and diplomacy must also create breakthroughs and turn around the situation in attracting external resources to serve the country's development.
We believe that at present, more than ever, promoting economic diplomacy is both an objective and subjective requirement.
Objectively, we have discussed a lot about current global trends in a hyper-connected world, the need for cooperation between countries is also very large to promote cooperation for mutual development.
From Vietnam's subjective needs, the country is also entering a new development stage with aspirational goals for national development by 2030 and 2045.
The current economic scale reaches nearly 480 billion USD, ranking 33rd in the world; average income per capita reaches 4,700 USD.
We have also become a very important link in the global supply chain and value chain, so we need to attract more international partners and international resources.
World friends also highly appreciate Vietnam's potential for cooperation.
During the exchange and contact with the leaders of the Party, State, Government, leaders of international organizations and experts highly appreciated Vietnam's socio-economic development achievements, were impressed with the growth in 2024; highly appreciated the Government's macro management, determined to perfect institutions, promote innovation, considered Vietnam a model in cooperation and believed in Vietnam's economic development prospects.
Thus, it can be seen that our current policy is very correct, which is to promote economic diplomacy to meet both our objective and subjective needs.
- In 2025, the world situation will continue to be complicated, and new developments may arise beyond forecasts. In the face of new challenges, what are the focuses of economic diplomacy, Deputy Minister?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Minh Hang: In 2025, the world situation will continue to be complicated with the trend of politicizing economic cooperation, separation and fragmentation becoming increasingly evident.
For Vietnam, 2025 is of important and "key" significance in implementing the 5-year socio-economic development plan for the 2021-2025 period and successfully achieving the goals set by the 13th Party Congress for the term, preparing to organize the 14th Party Congress, creating momentum to bring the country into a new era, an era of striving for strong development and prosperity of the nation.
In that spirit, economic diplomacy in 2025 will be implemented with the Government's motto "what is said is done; what is committed is done; what is done must be effective, the product must be quantifiable, specific, clear, measured, and counted" and the approach of "clear goals, clear people, clear work, clear time, clear responsibilities, clear products, clear results."
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Founder and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation, Mr. Jensen Huang. (Photo: Duong Giang/VNA)
Regarding the way of doing things, we must continue to innovate in the spirit of acceleration, determination, and boldness to create new efficiency and breakthroughs, closely following the Government's 2025 management theme of "discipline, responsibility, proactiveness, efficiency, and acceleration." focusing on the following 5 key points:
Firstly, promote economic diplomacy in high-level foreign affairs activities in 2025 to maintain momentum, further strengthen relations with key and important partners and expand relations with potential partners.
Take advantage of multilateral forums hosted by Vietnam such as the P4G Summit, the ASEAN Future Forum, and the UNCTAD Conference to promote economic and trade cooperation with other countries.
Second, promote more vigorously, develop specific plans, and establish a mechanism for exchanging with partners on promoting the implementation of high-level agreements that have been reached.
In particular, advise and vigorously promote the removal of bottlenecks and remaining obstacles in cooperation with partners (such as the issue of removing the IUU yellow card for Vietnamese seafood, promoting cooperation with China in developing border gate economy, traffic connection, vigorously implementing 3 railway lines connecting with China...).
Third, promote and create breakthroughs in economic-trade, investment and labor relations, practically serving development goals, including promoting access to and exploitation of new markets with great potential but not yet exploited such as Halal markets, Africa, South Asia, Latin America..., promoting the development of the aviation industry to serve trade and transport of goods, promoting the signing of new FTAs with potential markets.
Fourth, promote new growth drivers, in which technology diplomacy, semiconductor diplomacy, and digital economic diplomacy are the focus and breakthrough of new-age economic diplomacy, focusing on researching and establishing specialized partnership frameworks with partner countries in science-technology, semiconductors, and AI, concretizing and maximizing the potential from cooperation frameworks with important partners such as NVIDIA.
Finally , in its role as a policy advisor, economic diplomacy continues to focus on strategic advisory work and policy proposals to serve socio-economic management, closely following the world and regional situations and the country's development requirements, especially new, untapped markets and the needs of foreign partners to promptly recommend appropriate policies.
Promote research on new and breakthrough solutions in attracting resources for development, especially in developing green economy, digital economy, circular economy, technology transfer, innovation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, climate change response, etc.
I believe that with the joint efforts, solidarity and unanimity of the diplomatic sector, overseas representative agencies, departments, ministries, branches, localities, associations and enterprises, economic diplomacy will continue to be implemented more strongly, comprehensively and creatively and achieve more breakthrough results, effectively and substantially contributing to socio-economic development, successfully implementing the goals of the 2021-2025 period; consolidating the foundation for the country to enter a new era, an era of national development.
- Thank you very much, Deputy Minister./.
(Vietnam+)
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