Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid an official visit to Japan and attended the ASEAN-Japan Commemorative Summit and the Fifth Mekong - Japan Summit in Tokyo from December 12-15.

The visit was evaluated as successful and showed that the Vietnam-Japan Strategic Partnership has continually been strengthened and developed through important achievements obtained in different fields of economics, trade, investment and Japan’s pledge to provide Vietnam with official development assistance (ODA) at a high level.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe affirmed Japan highly treasures the relations with Vietnam and considered Vietnam one of the leading partners in the region. In 2013, prime ministers of the two nations had two official visits and two phone talks that expressed the trust and unprecedented cooperation in bilateral relations of the two countries.

During their talk, the two sides agreed to further strengthen cooperation in many aspects with a focus on economics, trade and investment to deepen the current strategic partnership between the two countries.

The two prime ministers affirmed that they would closely coordinate to conduct its action plans for the six key industries in the industrialization development strategy within the Vietnam-Japan cooperation framework until 2020 with a vision for 2030; promote cooperation in other sectors, such as education, human resources training, science – technology, people-to-people exchange, healthcare and climate change adaptation. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced an official development assistance (ODA) package of 100 billion JPY (1 billion USD) for Vietnam.

During the second half of the 2013 fiscal year, the ODA amount will be allocated to five projects, including two sections of the North-South Highway, two infrastructure development projects at Lach Huyen Port in northern Hai Phong, construction of the Ninh Thuan No. 2 Nuclear Power Plant and the Viet Nam Space Centre.

Large enterprises and economic groups of Japan also affirmed to maintain and expand the scale of investment to Vietnam and expressed their concern on cooperation of public-private partnership of Japan in Vietnam.

Relating to regional and international cooperation, the two sides affirmed the importance of ensuring peace, stability and cooperation development in the region; ensure maritime security and safety, navigation and trade freedom without constraints, peaceful settlement of disputes in line with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); also ensure aviation freedom and safety on the basis of international law and practice as well as standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The two sides affirmed to support ASEAN’s efforts on building the community and playing the decisive role in cooperation structure of the region for peace, security and development; raising the success of the ASEAN – Japan Commemorative Summit and the fifth Mekong – Japan Summit.

Source: VNA/VNP