On March 8, senior economic officials from the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) met to prepare for the
12th ASEAN Economic Ministers and EU Trade Commissioner consultations
and the upcoming 3rd ASEAN-EU Business Summit on March 9 in Hanoi.
The event took place in the framework of the 19th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting.
According to a representative from the EU delegation, Helena Konig,
participants highly valued both sides’ achievements over the last two
years.
Cooperation plans for the next two years and a
mechanism to share and support information between the two sides were
discussed at the event.
Both sides offered
initiatives to provide the two sides’ experts an opportunity to share
experience and boost the EU and ASEAN’s integration to help build the
ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015, added Konig.
At the event, the officials discussed bilateral economic and trade
ties, and the implementation of the economic and trade cooperation
programme between ASEAN and the EU.
They approved an
agenda that will be reported to ASEAN economic ministers and the EU
Trade Commissioner, and discussed suggestions raised at the previous
ASEAN and EU Business Summit.
In 2012, the EU topped the list of FDI investors in ASEAN and was the third largest trading partner in ASEAN.
The EU is Vietnam’s second largest trading partner and leading importer of Vietnamese commodities.
By October last year, the EU had 1,781 FDI projects in Vietnam with a total registered capital of 33.4 billion USD.-VNA