Vice President of Argentina Gabriela Michetti meets with Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai (Photo: VNA)
Buenos
Aires
(VNA) – Vietnam is one of
the most important economics, trade and investment partner of Argentina, Vice President of Argentina Gabriela Michetti told Vietnam’s
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Thang Hai at a meeting in Buenos Aires on October
27.
Michetti, who is also President of the
Argentine Senate, stressed that Argentina
is keen on developing cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, and
recognised the remarkable progresses in bilateral relations in recent
years.
She proposed Vietnam create opportunities for
businesses to cooperate in the fields of their strengths, including
garment-textile, agriculture, culture, and people-to-people exchanges.
For his part, Deputy Minister Hai briefed
the outcomes of the mid-term session of the Vietnam-Argentina intergovernmental
committee, which took place in Buenos
Aires on October 25-26, and affirmed that this
mechanism has helped promote bilateral cooperation not only in economics, trade
and investment but also in agriculture, science and technology.
He urged the two sides to strengthen
coordination to increase bilateral trade to 3.5 billion USD in 2017 as well as
speed up the roadmap to open markets for farm produce in 2017-2018 which includes facilitating procedures for Vietnamese fruits such as lychees, dragon
fruits, longans and mangoes and Argentine fruits such as oranges, blueberries,
pears, apples and cherries.
The official also suggested increasing
delegation exchanges and hosting trade and investment promotion activities to
help firms explore business environment in the respective countries.
Vietnam will serve as a gateway for Argentina
to export goods to the Southeast Asian market while Argentina
will help Vietnam
penetrate into the Latin American market, he affirmed.
He proposed Argentina – a founding member
of the South America’s Fractious Trade Bloc (Mercosur) accelerate the
negotiation process and signing of a preferential trade agreement between this
bloc and Vietnam.
Earlier on October 25-26, Deputy Minister
Hai and Secretary for International Economic Relations of the Argentine Foreign
Ministry Horacio Reyser co-chaired a meeting of the Vietnam-Argentina
inter-governmental committee.
Reyser said Vietnam is not only a
priority market in the strategy of diversifying and expanding exports of
Argentina but also one of the most important trade partners in Asia and the
third biggest importer of Argentina.
Hai cited two-way trade
surpassed 3 billion USD in 2016, showing a year-on-year rise of 16.7 percent.
In the first nine months of 2017, bilateral trade reached nearly 2.4
billion USD, up 15 percent against the same period last year.
Vietnam mainly exported footwear, garment-textile, rubber, electronic spare parts, and
plastic products while importing soybeans, soybean oil, maze, wheat,
cattle-feed, and pharmaceutical products from the market.
The two sides pledged to speed up the
exchanges of views on food security and animal and plant quarantine. Argentina wants to export cherries to Vietnam while Vietnam looks to ship lychees to
the South American country.
During his visit to Argentina, Deputy Minister Hai also had a
working session with Argentina’s
Deputy Minister of Production Miguel Braun.-VNA