Vietnam pledges support for Philippine investors

Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnamese Government commits to accompanying and creating favourable conditions for Philippine enterprises to land successful, sustainable and long-term investment in Vietnam in accordance with the country’s regulations, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said on January 30.

Co-chairing the Meeting with Businesses with visiting Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., Chinh described the fruitful Vietnam – Philippines relations as an important foundation that creates motivation and confidence for enterprises from both sides to expand investment and business as well as promote trade and investment cooperation.

However, the bilateral economic, trade and investment ties have lagged behind the two countries’ sound political relations, opportunities and potential, he pointed out, suggesting the two sides work together to renew the existing cooperation locomotives in the areas of investment, trade, and consumption while developing new cooperation ones across digital transformation, green transition, and climate change response, and boosting collaboration in the fields of one’s strength and the other’s demand.

Recognising the complementary factors of the two economies, the PM highlighted that Vietnam and the Philippines should enhance competition to improve the quality of products and services to meet the customers’ requirements, and promote cooperation to leverage common strength.

The Vietnamese Government leader urged both sides to remove bottlenecks, grant investment licenses in a swift manner as well as lift irrational technical barriers, adding relevant authorities in Vietnam have worked to create a better business climate and development space for businesses from the two countries.

As there are no roadblocks in the bilateral cooperation, PM Chinh asked both sides to organise more meetings and exchange events to push ahead the two economies’ connectivity, concretise high-level agreements, and develop the Vietnam – Philippines Strategic Partnership into a deeper and more practical and effective fashion for prosperity in each nation and for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world.

For his part, the Philippine President stressed that the Strategic Partnership should expand its reach to enterprises, especially those operating in the areas of innovation, towards sustainable development so as to bring practical benefits to the two countries, and for regional peace, stability, cooperation, and development.

He hailed Vietnam’s open policies and enthusiastic support for businesses, and expressed his belief that Philippine companies will continue expanding cooperation and investment in Vietnam – a dynamic developing country, while Vietnamese firms should see Philippines a potential market for investment and business collaboration.

The Philippine leader recommended both sides keep on developing cooperation across traditional fields of economy and trade and other non-traditional ones such as mining, green technology, transport and technology.

Regarding Vietnam’s concern over the Philippines’ trade defence measures and technical barriers, he said the two countries should build a good business environment and step up cooperation at governmental and business levels.

The event drew the attendance of many Vietnamese and Philippine enterprises who are engaging in the fields of infrastructure development, trade, realty, automobile industry, aviation, IT, food, energy, education-training, among others.

They got updated with the socio-economic development in each nation and business cooperation outcomes between the two countries over the past time, and shared new investment trends and orientations in the coming time.

Vietnamese firms want to cooperate with the Philippine peers in digital transformation, green transition, hi-tech industries, and food processing. Meanwhile, the Philippine side hopes to collaborate with Vietnam in electric automobile production, infrastructure development, telecommunications, energy, food, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and retail sales./.