Australia wants to further enhance its relationship with Vietnam in all fields, including cooperative ties between Australian localities and Ho Chi Minh City, for the benefits of the two peoples.

Australian General-Governor Quentin Bryce emphasised this desire at a meeting with the chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee, Le Hoang Quan on May 12.

Bryce expressed her impressions of Vietnam’s poverty reduction results and said she was pleased that Australia’s assistance projects in Vietnam, especially child-oriented projects, were effective.

Chairman Quan spoke highly of the fine cooperation between the city and Australia, especially in the fields of science and technology and tourism, education and training, notably RMIT University, that has trained about 10,000 students over the past 10 years.

He added that Ho Chi Minh City was Vietnam’s first locality to sign a cooperation agreement with an Australian partner, firstly with the State of Queensland, during Quentin Bryce’s term of office.

Ho Chi Minh City has sent about 1,000 officials to Australia for training and attracted about 90 investment projects from Australian businesses worth over 500 million USD, Quan said.

The same day, the Australian leader visited RMIT University and Ho Chi Minh City Medicine and Pharmacy University, which is coordinating with Queensland University of Technology to run a training course for nursing.

She said they are good models for bilateral cooperation, helping Vietnam raise the quality of university education as well as training human resources in the medical sector./.