During the meeting, Minister Nguyen Hong Dien and Korean Ambassador Park Noh-wan agreed that the Vietnam-RoK economic and trade cooperation relationship still has a lot of potential and advantages for further development, thanks to good political relations, close geographical distance, similar consumer markets, complementary structure of import and export goods, the active participation of both parties in the free trade agreements and especially the increasingly close connection in the global value chain.
At the meeting (Photo: congthuong.vn)
Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic continued to develop complicatedly, causing many difficulties for the bilateral economic and trade cooperation, Minister Dien and Ambassador Park Noh-wan spent most of the time discussing measures to come up with solutions to remove and promote trade, industry and energy cooperation between the two sides in the coming time.
The two sides agreed to continue to closely cooperate and maximize the effectiveness of bilateral cooperation mechanisms in implementing specific tasks, including responding to the COVID-19 pandemic; carrying out an action program to realize the bilateral trade target of USD100 billion by 2023; promoting the Vietnam-Korea supply chain connection; strengthening cooperation in energy; promoting the activities of the Vietnam-Korea Technology Consulting and Solution Center; and regularly organizing dialogues between the Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade and Korean enterprises.
Minister Nguyen Hong Dien shared about the difficulties in entry of experts and high-quality personnel serving Korean FDI projects, as well as difficulties in moving the workforce to serve Korean FDI projects in Bac Giang, Bac Ninh, Vinh Phuc and Thai Nguyen provinces in the context of the complex COVID-19 pandemic, stressing that the difficulties are temporary.
In order to ensure safe and uninterrupted production of Korean FDI enterprises as well as to contribute to ensuring the safety and health of the people, Minister Dien suggested that the Korean Ambassador, and especially Samsung and SK Groups which signed a contract to manufacture vaccines in the Republic of Korea with Moderna Corporation and Novanax Group, support Vietnam in accessing vaccine sources to realize the goal of large-scale COVID-19 vaccination, especially the vaccination for workers and labourers at factories and industrial parks with Korean FDI enterprises.
Ambassador Park Noh-wan and representatives of Korean businesses agreed with the sharing and proposal of Minister Dien, affirming to try their best to contribute to creating a vaccine supply for Vietnam to effectively implement the “dual goals" of preventing and fighting the pandemic, protecting people's health, and recovering socio-economic development in a new normal state.
In the first four months of 2021, Vietnam – RoK import-export turnover reached USD23.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 15.1%. The RoK is currently Vietnam’s foreign largest investor. As of May 20, the RoK had 9,076 projects in Vientam with registered capital of nearly USD72 billion./.