Huge potential for HCM City to expand ties with India: City leader

Hanoi (VNA) – Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party’s Committee Nguyen Van Nen on June 20 had a meeting with Indian Vice President Venkaiah Naidu as part of his visit to India.

Welcoming Nen, Naidu, who is also Chairman of the Council of States of India, said 2022 is of significance to the Vietnam-India relations as the two countries are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic ties this year (1972 – 2022).

Given that Vietnam, including HCM City, boasts great advantages in agricultural production, Vice President Naidu wishes the two sides to further support and share experience with each other to develop agriculture and ensure food security in India.

Nen, for his part, thanked the Government and people of India for their timely support for the southern city when it was battling the COVID-19 outbreak, saying the city has kept the virus at bay and been seeing strong socio-economic recovery. HCM City is standing firm as the main engine of the Vietnamese economy, he said.

He went on to highly appreciate the Indian community in HCM City for playing a part in promoting Indian culture in Vietnam and strengthening the bilateral ties. There is huge potential for the two sides to expand cooperation in the fields of defence-security, trade, information technology, digital transformation, tourism, cultural exchange, and people-to-people diplomacy, the city leader said.

HCM City is looking forward to fully unleashing potential for growing bilateral partnership in tourism after a direct flight has been launched between the two countries.

Nen later paid a courtesy call to President of the Indian People’s Party Prakash Nadda during which they spent much of their time discussing about Party building.

He later met with Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar and paid a courtesy visit to Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)./.