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| Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh receives WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweal. (Source: VNA) |
On the morning of May 18, at the Government headquarters, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh received WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is on a working visit to Vietnam.
The Prime Minister highly appreciated the role and efforts of Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in operating and promoting WTO activities; congratulated her on the remarkable results she has achieved since taking office as WTO Director-General in March 2021.
The Prime Minister affirmed that Vietnam has always been proactive and active in promoting international integration in general and international economic integration in particular in a deep, comprehensive, increasingly substantive and effective manner. After more than 35 years of renovation, the scale of Vietnam's economy has reached 409 billion USD; per capita income has increased from 160 USD to 4,100 USD. Vietnam's export turnover will reach 371 billion USD in 2022.
To date, Vietnam has been among the top 20 economies in international trade; has signed about 100 bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, and more than 60 investment promotion and protection agreements.
Sharing about Vietnam's successes at the request of the WTO Director General, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh emphasized that Vietnam has the right direction for national development based on three main pillars: building socialist democracy, a socialist rule-of-law state, and a socialist-oriented market economy.
Throughout that process, Vietnam takes internal resources as strategic and decisive, external resources as important and breakthrough; takes people as the center, subject, driving force and resource of development; does not sacrifice fairness, social progress, and the environment for mere economic growth.
Along with that, Vietnam firmly adheres to an independent and self-reliant foreign policy for peace, friendship, cooperation and development, multilateralization, diversification and comprehensive and extensive international integration.
The Prime Minister affirmed that as a responsible member of the WTO, Vietnam advocates promoting a proactive and active role in the WTO's cooperation frameworks, striving to fully implement its commitments and make positive and constructive contributions to issues of common concern at the WTO.
Vietnam always supports an open, transparent, fair and rules-based multilateral trading system with the WTO playing a central role to promote trade and investment, while contributing to effectively responding to challenges facing countries such as connecting supply chains, eliminating tariff barriers, fighting trade protectionism; and promoting trade exchanges in the context of global trade showing signs of decline.
The Prime Minister hopes that the WTO will continue to promote its coordinating role to promote global trade in an inclusive and balanced manner; support member countries to seize opportunities from shifting trends, reshaping supply chains, production, investment... especially developing and underdeveloped countries, in line with the principles and purposes of the WTO.
To further strengthen the cooperative relationship between the WTO and Vietnam, the Prime Minister suggested that the WTO continue to reform strongly and substantially to affirm its role as the foundation of a transparent and fair multilateral trading system, ensuring practical benefits and efficiency for countries, especially developing and underdeveloped countries, including Vietnam; the WTO reform process needs to ensure a balance of rights and obligations, in accordance with the development level and implementation capacity of members, especially developing members with low levels and underdevelopment.
The Prime Minister said that Vietnam is ready to share its experience in implementing its commitments to join the WTO, promoting trade growth, socio-economic development, poverty reduction, reducing social inequality and promoting women's empowerment in the economy; coordinating with other members to make substantial and effective contributions to WTO activities in the coming time, specifically implementing the commitments of the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (June 2022); as well as making efforts to reach consensus on how to handle major remaining issues that the WTO and its member countries will need to continue to promote.
The Prime Minister hopes that the Director General and the WTO will continue to support and promote cooperation programs and financial and technical assistance of the WTO to help Vietnam improve the effectiveness of international economic integration and continue to make practical contributions to the activities of the WTO.
Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala congratulated Vietnam on its socio-economic development achievements; saying that Vietnam's success has inspired and provided experience for many countries around the world, especially in the field of foreign economic relations serving national development.
In particular, in recent times, while the world economy has faced many difficulties and challenges, Vietnam's economy has still grown at a fairly high rate because Vietnam has had major orientations and has flexibly and effectively managed financial and monetary policies.
Ms. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala agreed with the Prime Minister's views on reforming the WTO as well as strengthening cooperation between the WTO and Vietnam; wished to cooperate with Vietnam in developing green economy, digital economy, inclusive economy; continued to care for the lives of vulnerable groups, women and children so that no one is left behind.
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