The Italian city of Genoa will seek opportunities to promote its investment and trade ties with Vietnam by building information channels and implementing projects in the fields of economy, culture and education.

Genoa authorities unveiled the city’s plan during their recent meetings with the Vietnamese Ambassador to Italy, Dang Khanh Thoai.

They said companies in Genoa and the Liguria region as a whole want to increase activities to explore investment and business opportunities in Vietnam - a market with a high potential for growth but a modest inflow of Italian investment largely due to the lack of information and knowledge about it.

As an industrially developed city, and boasting a large seaport, Genoa is ready to step up cooperation with Vietnam in the areas of its strengths, such as ship repair, maritime transport, vocational training and two-way trade.

Both the local leadership and the business community expressed their optimism that the understandings reached during State President Nguyen Minh Triet’s visit to Italy last December, together with Vietnam’s high and steady economic growth rate, will create a foundation to spur investment between the two countries, especially in the Liguria region and in Genoa city.

In his meeting with the city’s Mayor Marta Vincenzi, Thoai invited Genoa to participate in the millennium celebrations of Thang Long-Hanoi to be held in Vietnam and Italy this year.

A committee was set up to guide the implementation of specific activities as part of the celebrations, including photo and painting exhibitions and music and dance performances.

The Genoa Exhibition Centre also invited Vietnam to join Europe’s largest flower festival “Euroflora 2011”, while the University of Genoa expressed its willingness to cooperate with Vietnam in scientific research, the sharing of information and in receiving Vietnamese students for study in fields such as mechanics, architecture and navigation.

During Vietnam’s war of resistance against US aggressors, of all Italian cities, the solidarity movement with Vietnam was at its strongest in Genoa. The voyage of the Australe from Genoa in 1973, a ship which carried relief aid to the northern port of Hai Phong during the US blockade, is considered vivid evidence of the solidarity extended to the Vietnamese people by the people of Italy in general and Genoa in particular./.